Institutio Oratoria

Indeed we should have no justification for protracting our studies if we were forbidden to improve upon our original views. Still none of my past teaching was superfluous: for the views which I am now going to produce will be found to be based on the same principles, and consequently no one need be sorry to have attended my lectures, since all that I am now attempting to do is to collect and rearrange my original views so that they may be somewhat more instructive. But I wish to satisfy everybody and not to lay myself open to the accusation that I have allowed a long time to elapse between the formation and publication of my views.

I used to follow the majority of authorities in adhering to three rational bases, the conjectural, qualitative and definitive, and to one legal basis. [*](See III. v. 4.) These were my general bases. The legal basis I divided into five species, dealing with the letter of the law and intention, contradictory laws, the syllogism, ambiguity and competence.