Institutio Oratoria

You have no right to disinherit, since a person who has been deprived of civil rights is not allowed to take legal action.

I have the right, since disinheriting is not legal action.

[*](Disinheritance could only be effected by legal action.) The question here is what is legal action. And we shall arrive at the conclusion that the son's disinheritance is unlawful, by use of the syllogism. [*](See § 15.) The case will be similar with all the rational and legal bases.

I am aware that there have been some who placed competence among rational bases, using as illustrations cases such as,

I killed a man under orders from my general,

I gave the votive offerings in a temple to a tyrant under compulsion,

I deserted owing to the fact that storms or floods or ill health prevented me from rejoining.

That is to say it was not due to me, but some external cause.

From these writers I differ even more widely: for it is not the nature of the legal action itself which is involved in the question of competence, but the cause of the act;

and this is the case in almost every defence. Finally he who adopts this line of defence, does not thereby abandon the qualitative basis; for he states that he himself is free from blame, so that we really should differentiate between two kinds of quality [*]( ( A ) Absolute, when the deed is shown to be right. ( B ) Relative, when the act is not defended, but the agent is cleared of the guilt of the act. ) one of which comes into play when both the accused person and his act are defended, and the other when the accused person alone is defended.