§ 168 Obligations Arising From Contracts
The first and most important class of obligations consists of those which are created by contract. We have in a former chapter sufficiently considered the nature of a contract,461 and we there saw that it is that kind of agreement which creates rights in personam between the parties to it. Now of rights in personam obligations are the most numerous and important kind, and of those which are not obligations comparatively few have their source in the agreement of the parties. The law of contract, therefore, is almost wholly comprised within the law of obligations, and for the practical purposes of legal classification it may be placed there with sufficient accuracy. The coincidence, indeed, is not logically complete: a promise of marriage, for example, being a contract which falls within the law of status, and not within that of obligations. Neglecting, however, this small class of personal contracts, the general theory of contract is simply a combination of the general theory of agreement with that of obligation, and does not call for any further examination in this place.462