ABSTRACT
All rights and duties derive from a state that has come into being of things or of persons; but in the contract proper, it is a state simply conceived and not yet in being that lies at the root of the obligation. The same probably applies to the ritual attached to the straw stalk. In the last lecture we seemed to see in this rite a survival of the real contract. The contract with solemn ritual lent itself easily to the advance that was to come about in the course of time. The contract by ritual was secured only by magic and sacred processes: in the consensual form the given word acquired the same security and the same objectivity through the effect of the law alone. The contract by solemn ritual has moreover not wholly passed away. In all codes of law it still has some application.
