ued to mean at once, within a week. The other
thinks that it means when he is ready. The court says that it means
within a reasonable time. The parties are bound by the contract as it
is interpreted by the court, yet neither of them meant what the court
declares that they have said. In my opinion no one will understand the
true theory of contract or be able even to discuss some fundamental
questions intelligently until he has understood that all contracts are
formal, that the making of a contract depends not on the agreement of
two minds in one intention, but on the agreement of two sets of external
signs--not on the parties' having meant the same thing but on their
having said the same thing. Furthermore, as the signs may be addressed
to one sense or another--to sight or to hearing--on the nature of the
sign will depend the moment when the contract is made. If the sign is
tangible, for instance, a letter, the contract is made when the letter
of acceptance is delivered. If it is necessary that the minds of the
parties meet, there will be no contract until the acceptance can be
read; none, for example, if the acceptance be snatched from the hand of
the offerer by a third person.

This is not the time to work out a theory in detail, or to answer many
obvious doubts and questions which are suggested by these general views.
I know of none which are not easy to answer, but what I am trying to do
now is only by a series of hints to throw some light on the narrow path
of legal doctrine, and upon two pitfalls which, as it seems to me, lie
perilously near to it. Of the first of these I have said enough. I hope
that my illustrations have shown the danger, both to speculation and
to practice, of confounding morality with law, and the trap which legal
language lays for us on that side of our way. For my own part, I often
doubt whether it would not be a gain if every word of moral significance
could be banished from the law altogether, and other words adopted which
should convey legal ideas uncolored by anything outside the law. We
should lose the fossil records of a good deal of history and the
majesty got from ethical associations, but by ridding ourselves of an
unnecessary confusion we should gain very much in the clearness of our
thought.

So much for the limits of the law. The next thing which I wish to
consider is what are the forces which determine its content and its
growth. You may assume, with Hobbes and Bentham and Austi