The concepts of law, State, and property in general jurisprudence are distinguished from the concepts of law, State, and property in the particular jurisprudences by lacking the characteristic of being concepts of norms of one of these systems or at least one of these families of systems, and consequently lacking also all the characteristics which may be deduced from this characteristic according to the special substance of some system or family of laws. The concept of law _per se_ is distinguished from the concept of law in present European law and from the concept of law in the present law of the German empire by not being a concept of norms of that family of laws, not to say that particular system, and consequently by lacking all the characteristics that might belong to any peculiarities which might be common to all legal norms at present in force in Europe or in Germany. Its relation to the concepts of law in these particular jurisprudences is that of a generic concept to subordinate species-concepts. 4. In which of the senses here distinguished the concepts of law, State, and property should be defined in a particular case, and what matters should accordingly be taken into consideration in defining them, depends on the purpose of one's study. If, for example, the point is to describe scientifically the constitutional norms of the present law of the German empire, then the concept of the State as defined on this occasion must be a concept of the science of this particular legal system. For scientific work on the norms of a particular legal system requires that concepts be formed of the norms of just this system. Consequently the material to be taken into consideration will be only the constitutional norms of the present law of the German empire.--That the concepts defined in the scientific description of a system of law are in fact concepts of the science of this system may indeed seem obscure. For every concept of the science of any particular system of law may be defined as the concept of a species under the corresponding generic concept of general jurisprudence. We define this generic concept, say the concept of the State in general jurisprudence, and add the distinctive characteristic of the species-concept, that it is a concept of norms of this particular system of law, say of the present law of the German empire. And then we often leave this additional characteristic unexpressed, where we think we may assume (as is the case in the scientific description of the norms of any particular system of law) that everybody will regard it as tacitly added. The consequence is that the definition given in the scientific description of a particular system of law looks, at a superficial glance, like the definition of a concept of general jurisprudence.