ABSTRACT
The system of the real contract and the ritual contract correspond to a stage in social evolution in which the right of individuals commands only a slight measure of respect. The consequence was that the individual rights concerned in every contract had only a very slight measure of protection. The formal or ritual contract, like the real contract, could only be unilateral. In the real contract, the unilateral character arose by the fact that one of the parties carried out a performance indirectly. The consensual contract alone was able at a single stroke to create the two-way track of bonds that find in any reciprocal agreement. The role played by the thing in the real contract is filled by the words or the ritual used in the formal contract. The consensual contract pure and simple merely means, indeed, that the consent is the necessary but sufficing condition of the obligation.
