John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
CHAP. V. - Of PROPERTY.
Sect. 26. God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the
best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and
comfort of their being. And tho' all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in
common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a private dominion,
exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of
men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or
at all beneficial to any particular man. The fruit, or venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no
enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i.e. a part of him, that another can no longer
have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.
Sect. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his
own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may
say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath
mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by
him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that
excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man
but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common
for others.
Sect. 28. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in
the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then,
when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them
home? or when he picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That
labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common
mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns
or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery
thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had
starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is
the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the
property; without which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the
express consent of all the commoners. Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I
have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property, without the
assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were
in, hath fixed my property in them.
Sect. 29. By making an explicit consent of every commoner, necessary to any one's appropriating to himself any
part of what is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat, which their father or master had
provided for them in common, without assigning to every one his peculiar part. Though the water running in the
fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath
taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath
thereby appropriated it to himself.
1. What are the main points of Sect. 26?
2. According to Locke in Sect. 28, why does the grass that one’s horse has eaten become their property?
3. Why do you think that Locke spent so much time on discussing and defining property?