Once upon a time, we believed that the law is a real thing in the world, which is why a court could say that a corporation is in Delaware and not in New York.
So too we believed that
the worth of the work may not be easily known; but it has a worth, just as fixed and real as the specific gravity of a substance . . . .
John Ruskin, Unto this Last, and Other Writings 197 (Clive Wilmer, ed. Penguin Classics 2005) (1862).