 The first book of much consequence which he published was "Die Einheit des Staats und der Kirche mit Rücksicht auf die Deutsche Reichsverfassung" (1797), a work on the relations of church and state, with special reference to the constitution of the empire, which displayed the writer's power of analysis and his skill in making a complicated set of facts appear to be deductions from a few principles.In 1805 appeared "Versuch einer allgemeinen Hermeneutik des Rechts"; and in 1806 "Die Wissenschaft der Gesetzgebung", an attempt to find a new theoretical basis for society in place of the opportunist politics which had led to the cataclysm of the French Revolution.This basis he seemed to discover in something resembling Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism.