They are, by their very nature, acts necessarily following each
other in time, so that when the one act is, the other either is not
yet or is no longer.
It is only the philosophical transcendental deduction of the
conception of acquisition by contract that can remove all these
difficulties. In a juridical external relation, my taking possession
of the free-will of another, as the cause that determined it to a
certain act, is conceived at first empirically by means of the
declaration and counter-declaration of the free-will of each of us
in time, as the sensible conditions of taking possession; and the
two juridical acts must necessarily be regarded as following one
another in time. But because this relation, viewed as juridical, is
purely rational in itself, the will as a law-giving faculty of
reason represents this possession as intelligible or rational
(possessio noumenon), in accordance with conceptions of freedom and
under abstraction of those empirical conditions. And now, the two acts
of promise and acceptance are not regarded as following one another in
time, but, in the manner of a pactum re initum, as proceeding from a
common will, which is expressed by the term "at the same time," or
"simultaneous," and the object promised (promissum) is represented,
under elimination of empirical conditions, as acquired according to
the law of the pure practical reason.
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