The question concerning the relation of law and state, in the course of its scientific treatment, suffered the misfortune that a witty comparison was presented in place of an argument, in that it was said that the question boils down to that of the priority of the chicken and the egg. Although countless persons rest content with this ‘solution’, the comparison proves only how little the treatment of this important problem is capable of lifting itself above the sphere of a causal contemplation. It would be at all permissible to mention this comparison only if it were a matter of the investigation of historical events for the purpose of their causal explanation and if the law, as a concrete empirical phenomenon, were merely placed next to the state as an empirical reality of the same kind.