The distinction between ownership and possession, between the substantial and the external side (§ 45), becomes, in contract, the distinction between the common will as agreement and the actualization of that will through performance. That agreement, once arrived at, is, taken by itself in distinction from performance, something represented, to which, therefore, in accordance with the peculiar manner in which representations have determinate being in signs (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, § 379 f.), a particular determinate being must be given — in the expression of the stipulation through the formalities of gestures and other symbolic acts, and especially in a determinate declaration through language, the element most worthy of spiritual representation.

The stipulation is, according to this determination, indeed the form through which the content concluded in the contract has its determinate being as something at first merely represented. But representing is only a form, and does not carry the sense that the content is thereby still something subjective, something to be wished for or willed in this way or that; rather, the content is the conclusion, accomplished through the will, concerning this matter.