th many prolixities of form for the sale of insolvent
debtors' estates, and which remained in use under the socalled
'ordinary' system of procedure. Later generations adopted the
'extraordinary' procedure, and accordingly sales of goods became
obsolete along with the ordinary procedure of which they were a part.
Creditors are now allowed to take possession of their debtor's property
only by the order of a judge, and to dispose of it as to them seems most
advantageous; all of which will appear more perfectly from the larger
books of the Digest.

1 There was too a miserable form of universal acquisition under the SC.
Claudianum, when a free woman, through indulgence of her passion for a
slave, lost her freedom by the senatusconsult, and with her freedom her
property. But this enactment we deemed unworthy of our times, and have
ordered its abolition in our Empire, nor allowed it to be inserted in
our Digest.

TITLE XIII. OF OBLIGATIONS

Let us now pass on to obligations. An obligation is a legal bond, with
which we are bound by a necessity of performing some act according to
the laws of our State.

1 The leading division of obligations is into two kinds, civil and
praetorian. Those obligations are civil which are established by
statute, or at least are sanctioned by the civil law; those are
praetorian which the praetor has established by his own jurisdiction,
and which are also called honorary.

2 By another division they are arranged in four classes, contractual,
quasicontractual, delictal, and quasidelictal. And first, we must
examine those which are contractual, and which again fall into four
species, for contract is concluded either by delivery, by a form of
words, by writing, or by consent: each of which we will treat in detail.

TITLE XIV. OF REAL CONTRACTS, OR THE MODES IN WHICH OBLIGATIONS ARE
CONTRACTED BY DELIVERY

Real contracts, or contracts concluded by delivery, are exemplified
by loan for consumption, that is to say, loan of such things as are
estimated by weight, number, or measure, for instance, wine, oil, corn,
coined money, copper, silver, or gold: things in which we transfer
our property on condition that the receiver shall transfer to us, at a
future time, not the same things, but other things of the same kind and
quality: and this contract is called mutuum, because thereby meum or
mine becomes tuum or thine. The action to which it gives rise is called
a condiction.

1 Again, a m