This mode of acquisition is not quite correctly designated acquisition
by prescription (per praescriptionem); for the exclusion of all
other claimants is to be regarded as only the consequence of the
usucapion; and the process of acquisition must have gone before the
right of exclusion. The rational possibility of such a mode of
acquisition has now to be proved.
Any one who does not exercise a continuous possessory activity
(actus possessorius) in relation to a thing as his is regarded with
good right as one who does not at all exist as its possessor. For he
cannot complain of lesion so long as he does not qualify himself
with a title as its possessor. And even if he should afterwards lay
claim to the thing when another has already taken possession of it, he
only says he was once on a time owner of it, but not that he is so
still, or that his possession has continued without interruption as
a juridical fact. It can, therefore, only be a juridical process of
possession, that has been maintained without interruption and is
proveable by documentary fact, that any one can secure for himself
what is his own after ceasing for a long time to make use of it.
For, suppose that the neglect to exercise this possessory activity
had not the effect of enabling another to found upon his hitherto
lawful, undisputed and bona fide possession, and irrefragable right to
continue in its possession so that he may regard the thing that is
thus in his possession as acquired by him.
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