Through the splintering of these actions into ever more isolated actions, and their rights, which contain within themselves no limit, legal procedure — already, in itself, a means — comes to stand as something external over against its own purpose. — Since the parties have the right to go through such a lengthy formalism, which is their right, and since this right can equally be turned into an evil, and even an instrument of injustice, it becomes a duty imposed on them by the court — in order to protect the parties and right itself, as the substantial matter that is at stake, against legal procedure and its abuse — to submit themselves to a simple tribunal (an arbitration or conciliation court) and to an attempt at settlement, before they proceed to that formal procedure.

Equity contains an infringement upon formal right, made on moral or other grounds, and relates, in the first instance, to the content of the legal dispute. A court of equity, however, will have the significance of deciding on the individual case without holding to the formalities of legal procedure, and, in particular, to the objective means of proof as they can be legally framed, and of deciding according to the particular interest of the individual case as this case, not in the interest of a legal disposition to be made universal.