Principles of western civilisation

IV WESTERN LIBERALISM 109

Locke and those who followed him maintained, on the contrary, that having failed in its purpose it might be deposed.* But we have only to carry the examination far enough to find that the assumption upon which the argument rested in one case equally with the other was that men were in all these relations regarded as standing in a position of personal responsibility to principles, the meaning, the claim, and the operation of which were conceived as projected beyond the bounds of political consciousness. Although to Hobbes the “state of nature” was a state of war, when his argument is followed in the first thirty-one chapters of the Leviathan, or in chapter iv. of the essay on Liberty” (entitled “That the Law of Nature is a Divine Law”), it may be seen how this fundamental assumption controls the entire argument. In Locke's imaginary “state of nature,” again, the primary conception from which the argument proceeds is that men in a state of nature were to be regarded as born equal and independent. But when one after another of the passages in the Zwo Treatises of Government is passed before the mind, it may be perceived how characteristic and fundamental is the assumption on which the conception is made to rest. The state of nature, says Locke, in effect, has itself a law to govern it—a law which, when we come to inquire into its character, is perceived to be so far-reaching that it controls all the principles of the political State which is regarded as having succeeded to it.’

1 Two Treatises of Government, c. xix. (Of the Dissolution of Governments).

2 Cf. Hobbes’ works, edited by Sir William Molesworth, vol. ti. Lzberty —Dominion—Religion.

3 Speaking of the ‘‘state of nature,” Locke continues: ‘‘ But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license ; though man in that state have