Five-minute digest
Second Treatise of Government
Summary
The Second Treatise, subtitled 'An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government', is the constructive half of Locke's Two Treatises. The First Treatise demolishes Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, which derived the absolute power of kings from Adam's fatherly dominion. The Second offers an alternative account of political power as a trust created by the consent of free and equal individuals for limited ends. Locke begins with the state of nature. This is a condition of perfect freedom and equality, but not of licence, because the law of nature, which is reason, teaches that no one ought to harm another in 'life, health, liberty, or possessions'. Humans are God's workmanship, so they may not destroy themselves or others at will. In this state everyone holds the executive power of the law of nature and may punish transgressors. A state of war arises when someone tries to place another under absolute power. With no common judge, the only recourse is 'an appeal to heaven'. Slavery is legitimate only as the continuation of a state of war against a captured aggressor, since no one can consent to give another a power over his own life that he does not possess. The famous chapter on property argues that every person has a property in his own person, and that by mixing labour with what nature provides he makes it his own, within limits set by spoilage and by leaving enough and as good for others. Money, by allowing accumulation without spoilage, makes unequal possessions legitimate by tacit consent: 'in the beginning all the world was America'. Paternal power is a temporary duty to care for children until they reach the age of reason. Persons who never attain reason (Locke's 'lunatics and ideots') remain under the government of others. Political society arises when individuals give up their private executive power to a community and agree to be bound by the majority, chiefly for the preservation of their property, a word Locke uses for 'lives, liberties and estates'. The commonwealth needs established laws, impartial judges and the power to enforce. The legislative is the supreme power, but it is held in trust. It cannot rule by arbitrary decree, take property without consent, or transfer its authority. The executive may exercise prerogative for the public good where law is silent. Conquest gives no title over the conquered people's rights, and usurpation and tyranny are the exercise of power beyond right. The final chapter, on the dissolution of government, defends the people's right to resist and replace rulers who betray their trust. Locke insists that people bear 'many wrong and inconvenient laws' patiently, and only a 'long train of abuses' will move them to revolt. Written in the Exclusion Crisis and published after 1688, the work became a charter for limited government and natural rights, echoed nearly word for word in the American Declaration of Independence.
Top Lessons
Power is a trust that can be forfeited
For Locke, rulers are trustees of power given for specific ends. When they act beyond those ends, invading property or ruling arbitrarily, they forfeit the trust, and the people may judge and resist. This fiduciary model of authority also underlies modern ideas of professional duty, including the doctor's.
Self-ownership and its limits
Locke grounds property in a 'property in his own person', yet he also holds that we are God's workmanship and may not destroy ourselves or sell ourselves into slavery. The tension between self-ownership and inalienable life runs through modern debates on bodily autonomy, organ sales and assisted dying.
Reason as the threshold of freedom
Locke ties freedom to the capacity to know the law. Children are free in potential; those who never reach reason remain under guardianship. The passage is an early theory of capacity and guardianship, with all its benefits and dangers for people deemed 'lunatics and ideots'.
Property theory and colonial dispossession
Locke's claim that uncultivated land is waste, and his image of America as the world 'in the beginning', supplied arguments for settlers' title over Indigenous land. Locke himself was involved in colonial administration and investment. The chapter has to be read with that history in view.
Verified Quotes
“reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions”
“But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence”
“a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one”
Frequently cited
“yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself”
“Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy”
“Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as money was any where known”
Frequently cited
“where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law”
“And so lunatics and ideots are never set free from the government of their parents”
“Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we have actually the exercise of either: age, that brings one, brings with it the other too”
“The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property”
Frequently cited
“Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm”
“But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people”
Medical Lens
The Treatise is not about medicine, but its author was a physician. Locke studied medicine at Oxford, collaborated with Thomas Sydenham on clinical observation, and in 1668 directed the surgery that drained the Earl of Shaftesbury's hydatid liver cyst and left a silver tube in place, the event that bound him to his patron. Within the text, three strands matter for medical ethics. First, the law of nature protects 'life, health, liberty, or possessions' and forbids self-destruction, since we are God's property. That premise links self-ownership to the prohibition of suicide and of self-enslavement. Second, Chapter VI's account of children, 'lunatics and ideots' and Hooker's 'madmen' as persons governed by others until or unless they reach reason is an early theory of guardianship and capacity. Third, Locke's fiduciary model of power is a precursor of the idea of professional trust.
- Ch. II, §6
The law of nature forbids harming anyone in life, health, liberty or possessions; no one has liberty to destroy himself.
- Ch. IV, §23
No one can consent to absolute power over his own life, so self-enslavement is void.
- Ch. VI, §§57–61
Freedom tied to the age of reason; guardians must 'understand for' those without understanding; lunatics, 'ideots' and madmen remain under others' government.