The whole circumstance of the issue can be clinched with the central question in this regard: Is man prior to Law or is Law prior to man? This crucial difference of viewpoint in ultimate matters is the point of distinction between the Contract Theory of State propounded by Thomas Hobbes and the Logical Theory of State advocated by G. W. Hegel in the West. The Contract Theory holds that man was originally in a state of nature and was ruled by the law of the fish (the larger swallows the smaller) and the law of the jungle (might is right), and this could be the height of any conceivable insecure condition of things. If anyone could do anything to any other at any time under any circumstance, life would be in a state of perpetual threat and itself become impossible in the end. To obviate this sort of perpetual fear endangering the lives of everyone, people came to an agreement among themselves and framed a system of laws and of governance, vesting the power of rule in a single person (monarchy) or a body of persons (oligarchy or bureaucracy) or an assembly of chosen ones by periodical election (democracy). Here the law of the society and of political government is created by man by mutual consent or agreement to suit the circumstances or conditions under which he lives at any given time. When the circumstances of life change, the laws also can be and have to be changed by mutual understanding. Thus, it would appear that there is no such thing as law unless man wills that it should be there. It is the creation of his needs and environment of life. Law does not exist by itself. Man can do or undo it by a majority of votes (since it is unlikely that everyone would always consent to everything unanimously), and sometimes by the exercise of physical force even by a quantitative minority (as it has happened rarely in the history of the world, though unfortunately for the many in the majority)—a situation which implies that man makes laws either by understanding, which would be to the satisfaction of many, or by physical force, which can be to the sorrow of many. Anyway, according to this point of view of the of social law and political government, man is the law-maker, and this is the essence of the Theory of Contract in the science of politics. From this it also follows that even the sense of justice can turn out to be a mere crotchet or a whim in the minds of the ruling powers, because it is hard for the dispensation of justice to stand isolated from the operation of law. On a very close examination of the subject, the implications of the Contract Theory would seem to be inseparable from the psychological background of society studied by psychoanalysis. Man is no better now because he can make laws, for he can also unmake the very same laws by the very principles of contract, and rational justice would be a mere word without any substantial meaning.

Though it may be conceded that the Contract Theory is perhaps the truth of the historical origin of human law and government, even this manner of the origin of law must have itself originated from a principle which ought to have a logical priority over the historical accident of the origin of law according to the Contract Theory. Here we come to a very subtle philosophical point which would not ordinarily occur to the mind of the common man. Why does there come about a necessity for man to frame a law at all by mutual consent? The answer to this question is the logical ground which explains the meaning of law and the necessity for law. The principle which is prior to the human effort of mutual agreement in respect of the framing of the law is itself the central law, conditioning and regulating all the laws that man makes subsequently by agreement, election, etc. This is the point which Hegel endeavours to win over Hobbes. It cannot be that man is the sole maker of law; if that had been the case, it would be difficult to understand why at all man felt a need to make law. This need felt by him is the conditioning factor behind man-made laws and is the main law, the universal law, which regulates temporal laws of the terrestrial State. If the law arrests a person, imprisons him and even executes him, it is not because of the operation of the man-made law (else, man could suddenly change his law and abolish such a thing as legal punishment) but the reaction set up by a wider law which is superior even to the totality of the individuals in society and the members in the State. And what is this law?

Here we turn to the metaphysical background of law which is also its logical explanation and justification. The relationship between man and man is not the outcome of a mere quixotic agreement but a rational necessity dictated by the structure of the universe. Human relationship cannot be made or unmade according to fancy, for it is rooted in a fixed pattern of structural behaviour which is harmonious with the nature of the universe as a whole. The necessity for law arises on account of a need felt to rise and grow into a higher degree of reality than the one in which one finds oneself at a given moment of time. The growth into a higher reality is both quantitative and qualitative in a measure in which the two aspects cannot be distinguished one from the other. Is not the youth a higher degree of reality than the baby, both in the quantity of power and the quality of understanding? And, can we distinguish between this quantity and quality in the conduct and activity of the youth? This would, of course, be a commonplace example to substantiate the issue on hand. A higher degree of reality is much more in its grandeur and significance than this illustration would be able to suggest. The higher degree of reality implies and connotes not only a larger inclusiveness of quantitative measure but also a deeper profundity of knowledge and wisdom, or an insight into the nature of things. We may take another example for purpose of clarification: In what way does the degree of reality manifest in the waking world transcend that experienced in the dream world? It is the quality of the degree of reality in waking that would make a person consent to remain rather a beggar in the waking world than be a king in the dream world? The quantitative transcendence and inclusiveness in waking needs no mention, as it is obvious. To give a third example: Is not man more than a mere total or an assemblage of the different limbs of the body? All the parts of the body of a man, even when viewed together, cannot be regarded as the man himself, for what we mean by man is a significant meaning or a transcendent essence vitalising and animating the body and the personality rather than the body or the personality by itself. Man is a significance, a connotation, a suggestiveness, the state of an integrated consciousness, and not merely a physical body, a psychological unit or a social personality.

So is law. It is a transcendent, connotative significance or force which demands a gradational integration of consciousness, both in quantity and quality simultaneously, until it reaches its culmination, which is known as the Absolute. Law is, thus, an operation of the system of the Absolute, in different evolutionary degrees of comprehensiveness and perfection, right from the Ultimate Causality of the universe down to the revolution of an atom or the vibration of an electron. Social laws and political systems of administration cannot, therefore, be separated from the requisitions necessitated by the law of the Absolute. It is just this Universal Transcendent Principle that either rewards or punishes individuals by its gradational actions and reactions, and it is this, again, that is the basis of all human behaviour, looking so inscrutable, and this is the explanation as to why individuals strive for mutual love and cooperation, and, at the same time, keep themselves ready with a knife hidden in their armpits. Here we have, perhaps, the foundation of the philosophy of law. Ethics and morality have, thus, a necessary value. Law has a meaning, and it points to a truth beyond itself.