Tx GOVERNMENT 405 



that law " ; that is to say, those who invade the 

 rights of others. Moreover, truth and the keeping 

 of faith are commands of the Law of Nature, and 

 belong " to men as men," and not as members of 

 society (14). Locke uses the term Law of 

 Nature, therefore, in the sense in which it was 

 often (perhaps generally) employed by the jurists, 

 to denote a system of equity based on purely t- 

 rational considerations. 



There is no connection between this law of na- 

 ture and " natural rights," properly so called. The 

 state of nature imagined by Locke is, in fact, the i 

 individualistic golden age of philosophical anarchy, 

 in which all men voluntarily rendering suum 

 cuique, there is no need of any agency for the 

 enforcement of justice. While Hobbes supposes 

 that, in the state of nature, the Law of Nature was 

 silent, Locke seems to imagine that it spoke loudly 

 enough, but that men grew deaf to it. It was 

 only in consequence of the failure of some of them 

 to maij5tam_jthe_Qriginal standard of ethical eleva- 

 tion that those inconveniences arose which drove 

 the rest to combine into commonwealths ; to choose 

 rulers ; and to endow them, as delegates of all, 

 with the sum of the right to punish transgressors 

 inherent in each. 



In taking this important step, however, our 

 forefathers exhibited that caution and prudence 

 which might be expected from persons who dwelt 

 upon the ethical heights which they had reached 



