Ilyin’s first original work is “The Concepts of Law and Power. Experience of methodological analysis" (1910) - is devoted to a seemingly private question: can law and force be considered identical in a certain respect? The main point of Ilyin’s work is to demonstrate that law in its essential sense is not “reality” in the usual sense of the word. Law is the external expression of some deep relationships between people that go beyond their existence in the material world. Arguing that in a purely legal and logical sense, law is fundamentally different from force, the main feature of which is its direct implementation in the material world, Ilyin actually argues that law is a phenomenon associated with some super-empirical sphere, only indirectly manifested in the reality of the empirical world, in relations of coexisting legal individuals.