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 The [[contract]], ''[[consensus ad idem]]'' is an [[Res cogitans|immaterial thing]]. It has no [[Res extensa|physical extension]]. It does not intrude on the mortal plane. Its best Earthly representative is the ''written agreement'', a memorial on parchment wherein the parties do their best to set out the boundaries of their compact. The document is not the contract; the contract is not the document — they are spirit and flesh; a [[Platonic ideal]] and its flickering shadow on the grotto wall.
-But ''if'' there is some executed paper — and for most contracts, there need not be, but let’s just say there ''is'' — a [[Lord Justice Cocklecarrot M.R.|court]] will be disinclined to look beyond its “four corners” when divining the parties’ commercial intentions in signing it. This is in part convenience, in part laziness, but in part the fair assumption that, since the parties were bothered to write down the important parts of their agreement, anything they ''didn’t'' write down either didn’t exist or can’t have been important enough to justify memorialising. In this way the [[Platonic form]] of the contract and its extension into our decaying mortal realm become one. It’s rather biblical.
+But ''if'' there should be some executed paper — for most contracts there need not, but let’s just say there ''is'' — a [[Lord Justice Cocklecarrot M.R.|court]] will be disinclined to look beyond its “four corners” when divining the parties’ commercial intentions in signing it. This is in part convenience, in part laziness, but in part the fair assumption that, since the parties were bothered to write down the important parts of their agreement, anything they ''didn’t'' write down either didn’t exist or can’t have been important enough to justify memorialising. In this way the [[res cogitans|Platonic ''form'']] of the contract and its [[Res extensa|bodily ''extension'']] into our decadent organic realm become one. It’s rather biblical.
 Since an issue that has attracted the attention of the [[Queen’s Bench Division]] ''must'' be important, the Court’s doubt will benefit not one party or the other, but the paperwork both of them signed. The Lord is not your witness, so the signed written record will have to do.
-This rule against extraneous evidence — as with so many historic principles of the [[common law]], these days a diminished thing, is known as the “[[parol evidence]]” rule.
+This rule against extraneous evidence — as with so many historic principles of the [[common law]], these days a diminished thing — is known as the “[[parol evidence]]” rule.
+===The unilateral contract===
+Curiously, the foregoing is less obviously true in the case of a unilateral contract which is signed by neither parties: for example the famous [[carbolic smoke-ball]].  In that unique case, the immaterial ''[[consensus ad idem]]'' and the written form of the contract, albeit unsigned, are coextensive. There is no other articulation of the agreement.