With property, we already met two sides: ownership and possession. In contract, this difference returns. First there is the agreement. And then there is the performance, that is, the handing over.

An example: Two people agree on the sale of a house. They sign at the notary’s office. The buyer gets the keys only a month later.

The agreement must become visible:

As long as the agreement exists only in people’s heads, it stays invisible. So it needs a sign. In the past, this was often a gesture. When people bought a horse, they shook hands on it. But language suits best. A clear word, a signature. In language, spirit can show most clearly what it wants.

Only in the mind?

At first, the agreement exists only in thought. No one has carried it out yet. But that does not mean it is uncertain. It is no longer a wish or an intention. The will has decided. The matter stands firm.

A look back:

People tell of traders in distant forests. They lay down their goods and wait. Others come and put something next to them in return. There, agreement and performance fall together. Where life is richer, the two move apart.

Summary: In a contract, agreement and performance differ. The agreement needs a sign, best of all the word. With it, the will has already firmly decided.

§ 493. The two wills and their agreement in the contract are, as something inward, distinct from their realization, the performance. The relatively ideal expression in the stipulation contains the actual giving-up of a property by the one, the transition and the reception into the other will. The contract is valid in and for itself, and does not first become so through the performance of the one or the other — which would involve an infinite regress or an infinite division of the thing, the labor, and the time. The expression in the stipulation is complete and exhaustive. The inwardness of the will giving up the property and of the will receiving it lies in the realm of representation, and the word is, in this, deed and thing (§ 462), and indeed the fully valid deed, since the will here is not considered as moral (whether it is meant seriously or deceitfully), but rather is only a will directed at an external thing.

§ 493. The two wills and their agreement in the contract are, as something inward, distinct from their realization, the performance. The relatively ideal expression in the stipulation, however, already contains the actual giving-up of a property by the one, the transition and the reception into the other will. The contract is valid in and for itself, and does not first become so through the performance of the one or the other — which would involve an infinite regress or an infinite division of the thing, the labor, and the time. It is an external obligation (one that submits itself to coercion) which the will enters into, because it is only the will of abstract personality, and a willing directed at this or that thing. And its inwardness, which here is not the moral inwardness, is complete and exhausted in the expression of the stipulation. Its inwardness lies in the realm of representation, and the word is, within this, deed and thing. (§ 462.)

§ 409. The two wills that are present in the contract are, as something inward, distinct from their realization, the performance; just as (§ 406) the single will is distinct from the taking possession. The contract in the form of the ideal expression, the stipulation, already contains indeed the giving-up of a property by the one, the transition and the reception into the other will; it is therefore valid in and for itself, and does not first become so through the actual performance of the one or the other — which would involve an infinite regress or infinite division of the thing, the labor, and the time. But since the will in this sphere is at the same time still formal and arbitrary will (§ 407), it can correspond to its concept, or also not.