 Book 1, Chapter 6 of Two Treatises of Civil Government. Of Adam's title to sovereignty by fatherhood. There is one thing more, and then I think I have given you all that our author brings for proof of Adam's sovereignty, and that is a supposition of a natural right of dominion over his children by being their father. At this title of fatherhood he is so pleased with that he will find it brought in almost every page, particularly, he says, not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs had by right of fatherhood royal authority over their children, Page 12, and in the same page this subjection of children being the fountain of all regal authority, etc. This being, as one would think by his so frequent mentioning it, the main basis of all his frame, we may well expect clear and evident reason for it, since he lays it down as a position necessary to his purpose that every man that is born is so far from being free that by his very birth he becomes a subject of him that begets him, Observations 156, so that Adam, being the only man created, and all ever since being begotten, nobody has been born free. If we ask how Adam comes by this power over his children, he tells us here it is by begetting them, and so again, Observations 223, this natural dominion of Adam, says he, may be proved out of Grotius himself, who teaches that generatione jus acquiritur parentibus in liberos, and indeed the act of begetting being that which makes a man a father, his right of a father over his children, can naturally arise from nothing else. Observations tells us not here how far this jus in liberos, this power of parents over their children extends, but our author, always very clear in the point as shows us, it is supreme power, and like that of absolute monics over their slaves, absolute power of life and death. He that should demand of him how, or for what reason it is, that begetting a child gives the father such an absolute power over him, will find him answer nothing, we are to take his word for this, as well as several other things, and by that the laws of nature, and the constitutions of government must stand or fall. Had he been an absolute monarch, this way of talking might have suited well enough, Pro Ratione Voluntas might have been of force in his mouth, but in the way of proof or argument is very unbecoming, and will little advantage his plea for absolute monarchy. Sir Robert has too much lessened a subject's authority to leave himself the hopes of establishing anything by his bare saying it, one slave's opinion without proof is not of weight enough to dispose of the liberty and fortunes of all mankind. If all men are not, as I think they are, naturally equal, I am sure all slaves are. And then I may without presumption oppose my single opinion to his, and be confident that my saying that begetting of children makes them not slaves to their fathers, as certainly sets all mankind free, as his affirming the contrary makes them all slaves. But that this position, which is the foundation of all their doctrine who would have monarchy to be may have all fair play, let us hear what reasons others give for it, since our author offers none. The argument I have heard others make use of to prove that fathers, by begetting them, come by an absolute power over their children, is this, that fathers have a power over the lives of their children because they give them life and being, which is the only proof it is capable of, since there can be no reason why naturally one man should have any claim or pretence of right over that in another, which was never his, which he bestowed not, but was received from the bounty of another. One, I answer that every one who gives another anything has not always thereby a right to take it away again. But two, they who say the father gives life to his children are so dazzled with the thoughts of monarchy, that they do not as they ought remember God, who is the author and giver of life, it is in him alone we live, move and have our being. How can he be thought to give life to another, that knows not where in his own life consists? Philosophers are at a loss about it after their most diligent inquiries, and anatomists after their whole lives and studies spent in dissections and diligent examining the bodies of men confess their ignorance in the structure and use of many parts of man's body and in that operation wherein life consists in the whole. And doth the rude plowman, or the more ignorant of a luxury, frame or fashion such an admirable engine as this is, and then put life and sense into it? Can any man say he formed the parts that are necessary to the life of his child? Or can he suppose himself to give the life, and yet not know what subject is fit to receive it, nor what actions or organs are necessary for its reception or preservation? To give life to that which has yet no being is to frame and make a living creature, fashion the parts, and mould and suit them to their uses, and having proportioned and seated them together to put into them a living soul. Many that could do this might indeed have some pretence to destroy his own workmanship. But is there any one so bold that dares thus far arrogate to himself the incomprehensible works of the Almighty? Who alone did at first, and continues still, to make a living soul, he alone can breathe in the breath of life? If any one thinks himself an artist at this, let him number up the parts of his child's body which he have made, tell me their uses and operations, and when the living and rational soul began to inhabit this curious structure, when sense began, and how this engine which he has framed thinks and reasons. If he made it, let him, when it is out of order, mend it, at least tell where in the defects lie. Shall he that made the eye not see, says the psalmist, Psalm 94 and 9, see these men's vanities? The structure of that one part is sufficient to convince us of an all wise contriver, and he has so visible a claim to us as his workmanship, that one of the ordinary appellations of God in Scripture is God our Maker, and the Lord our Maker. And therefore, though our author, for the magnifying his fatherhood, be pleased to say, Observations 159, that even the power which God himself exercised of evermankind is by right of fatherhood. Yet this fatherhood is such and one as utterly excludes all pretents of title in earthly parents, for he is king because he is indeed Maker of us all, which no parents can pretend to be of their children. But had men skill and power to make their children, it is not so slight a piece of workmanship that it can be imagined they could make them without designing it. What father of a thousand when he begets a child, thinks father than the satisfying his present appetite? God in his infinite wisdom has put strong desires of copulation into the constitution of men, thereby to continue the race of mankind, which he doth most commonly without the intention and often against the consent and will of the begetter. And indeed those who desire and design children are but the occasions of their being, and when they design and wish to beget them, do little more towards their making than Dukeleon and his wife in the fable did towards the making of mankind by throwing pebbles over their heads. But grant that the parents made their children, gave them life and being, and that hence therefore owed an absolute power. This would give the father but a joint dominion with the mother over them, for nobody can deny but that the woman hath an equal share, if not the greater, as nourishing the child a long time in her own body out of her own substance. There it is fashioned, and from her it receives the materials and principles of its constitution. And it is so hard to imagine the rational soul should presently inhabit the yet unformed embryo as soon as the father has done his part in the act of generation, that if it must be supposed to derive anything from the parents, it must certainly owe most to the mother. But be that as it will, the mother cannot be denied an equal share in begetting of the child, and so the absolute authority of the father will not arise from hence. Our author indeed is of another mind, for he says, We know that God at the creation gave the sovereignty to the man over the woman, as being the nobler and principal agent in generation—observations 172. I remember not this in my Bible, and when the place is brought where God at the creation gave the sovereignty to man over the woman, and that for this reason, because he is the nobler and principal agent in generation, it will be time enough to consider and answer it. But it is no new thing for our author to tell us his own fancies for certain and divine truths, though they be often a great deal of difference between his and divine revelations, for God in the scripture says, His father and his mother that begot him. They who allege the practice of mankind for exposing or selling their children as a proof of their power over them, are with Sir Robert happy arguers, and cannot but recommend their opinion by founding it on the most shameful action and most unnatural murder human nature is capable of. The dens of lions and nurseries of wolves know no such cruelty as this. These savage inhabitants of the desert obey God and nature in being tender and careful of their offspring. They will hunt, watch, fight, and almost starve for the preservation of their young. Never part with them, never forsake them till they are able to shift for themselves. And is it the privilege of man alone to act more contrary to nature than the wild and most untamed part of the creation? Does God forbid us, under the severest penalty that of death, to take away the life of any man as stranger and upon provocation, and does he permit us to destroy those he has given us the charge and care of, and by the dictates of nature and reason as well as his revealed command requires us to preserve? He has in all the parts of the creation taken a peculiar care to propagate and continue the several species of creatures, and makes the individuals act so strongly to this end that they sometimes neglect their own private good for it, and seem to forget that general rule which nature teaches all things of self-preservation, and the preservation of their young as the strongest principle in them overrules the constitution of their particular natures. Thus we see, when their young stand in need of it, the timorous become valiant, the fierce and savage kind, and the ravenous tender and liberal. But if the example of what hath been done be the rule of what ought to be, history would have furnished our author with instances of this absolute fatherly power in its height and perfection, and he might have showed us in Peru people that begot children on purpose to fatten and eat them. The story is so remarkable that I cannot but set it down in the author's words. In some provinces, says he, there was so liquorish after man's flesh that they would not have the patience to stay till the breath was out of the body, but would suck the blood as it ran from the wounds of the dying man. They had public shambles of man's flesh, and their madness herein was to that degree that they spared not their own children, which they had begot on strangers taken in war, for they made their captives their mistresses, and choicelessly nourished the children they had by them till about thirteen years old they butchered and ate them, and they served the mothers after the same fashion when they grew past childbearing, and ceased to bring them any more roasters. Darcilaso de la Vega, Historia des Incas de Peru, 1.1.12 Thus far can the busy mind of man carry him to a brutality below the level of beasts when he quits his reason which places him almost equal to angels, nor can it be otherwise in a creature whose thoughts are more than the sands and wider than the ocean, where fancy and passion must needs run him into strange courses, if reason which is his only star and compass be not that he steers by. The imagination is always restless, and suggests variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project, and in this state he that goes farthest out of the way is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers. And when fashion hath once established what folly or craft began, custom makes it sacred, and it will be thought impudence or madness to contradict or question it. He that will impartially survey the nations of the world will find so much of their religions, governments and manners brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that he will have but little reverence for the practices which are in use and credit amongst men, and will have reason to think that the woods and forests, where the irrational, untaught inhabitants keep right by following nature, are fitter to give us rules than cities and palaces, where those that call themselves civil and rational go out of their way by authority of example. If precedents are sufficient to establish a rule in this case, our author might have found in holy writ children sacrificed by their parents, and these amongst the people of God themselves, the psalmist tells us, Psalm 106, 38, they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan. But God judged not of this by our author's rule, nor allowed of the authority of practice against his righteous law, but as it follows there, the land was polluted with blood, therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, in so much that he abhorred his own inheritance. The killing of their children, though it were fashionable, was charged on them as innocent blood, and so had in the account of God the guilt of murder, as the offering them to idols had the guilt of idolatry. Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, observations 155, let it be that they exposed them. Add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables to fat and eat them. If this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest, and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern, sins which, I suppose, have their principal aggravation from this, that they crossed the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto. In confirmation of this natural authority of the Father, our author brings a lame proof from the positive command of God in Scripture. His words are, To confirm the natural right of regal power, we find in the Decalogue, that the law which enjoins obedience to kings, is delivered in the terms, Honor thy Father, page 23, whereas many confess that government only in the abstract is the ordinance of God, they are not able to prove any such ordinance in the Scripture, but only in the farzily power, and therefore we find the commandment that enjoins obedience to superiors, given in the terms, Honor thy Father, so that not only the power and right of government, but the form of the power of governing, and the person having the power, are all the ordinances of God. The first Father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was Father immediately from God. To the same purpose the same law is cited by our author in several other places, and just after the same fashion, that is, and mother, as apocryphal words, are always left out, a great argument of our author's ingenuity and the goodness of his cause, which required in its defender zeal to a degree of warmth, able to warp the sacred rule of the Word of God, to make it comply with his present occasion. A way of proceeding not unusual to those who embrace not truths, because reason and revelation offer them, but espouse tenets and parties for end different from truth, and then resolve at any rate to defend them, and so do with the words and sense of authors they would fit to their purpose, just as procrustes did with his guests, lop or stretch them, as may best fit them to the size of their notions, and they always prove, like those so served, deformed, lame, and useless. For had our author set down this command without garbling, as God gave it, and joined mother to Father, every reader would have seen that it had made directly against him, and that it was so far from establishing the monarchical power of the Father, that it set up the mother equal with him, and enjoined nothing but what was due, in common, to both Father and Mother. For that is the constant tenet of the Scripture, Honor thy Father and thy Mother, Exodus 20. He that smighteth his Father or Mother shall surely be put to death, 2115. He that curseseth his Father or Mother shall surely be put to death, verse 17, repeated Leviticus 29, and by our Saviour Matthew 15.4. ye shall fear every man his Mother and his Father, Leviticus 19.3. If a man have a rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his Father or the voice of his Mother, then shall his Father and his Mother lay hold on him, and say, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice, Deuteronomy 21, 18, 19, 20, 21. Cursed be he that seteth light by his Father or his Mother, 28, 16. My son, hear the instructions of thy Father, and forsake not the law of thy Mother, other words of Solomon, a king who was not ignorant of what belonged to him as a Father or a King, and yet he joins Father and Mother together in all the instructions he gives children quite through his book of Proverbs. Woe unto him that saith unto his Father, what begetest thou, all to the woman, what hast thou brought forth? Isaiah 11, verse 10. In thee have they set light by Father or Mother, Ezekiel 28, 2. And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his Father and his Mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live, and his Father and his Mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesies, Zechariah 13, 3. Here not the Father only, but the Father and Mother jointly had power in this case of life and death. Thus ran the law of the Old Testament, and in the new they are likewise joined in the obedience of their children Ephesians 6, 1. The rule is children obey your parents, and I do not remember that I anywhere read children obey your father, and no more. The scripture joins Mother too in that homage which is due from children, and had there been any text where the honor or obedience of children had been directed to the Father alone, it is not likely that our author, who pretends to build all upon scripture, would have omitted it. Nay, the scripture makes the authority of Father and Mother, in respect of those they have begot, so equal that in some places it neglects even the priority of order which is thought due to the Father, and the Mother is put first, as Leviticus 19.3, from which so constantly joining Father and Mother together as is found quite through the scripture, we may conclude that the honor they have a title to do from their children is one common right, belonging so equally to them both, that neither can claim it wholly, neither can be excluded. One would wonder then, how our author infers from the fifth commandment that all power was originally in the Father, how he finds monarchical power of government settled and fixed by the commandment honor thy Father and thy Mother. If all the honor due by the commandment, be it what it will, be the only right of the Father, because he, as our author says, has the sovereignty over the woman, as being the nobler and principal agent in generation, why did God afterwards all along join the Mother with him to share in his honor? Can the Father, by this sovereignty of his, discharge the child from paying this honor to his mother? The scripture gave no such license to the Jews, and yet there were often breaches wide enough but to its husband and wife, even to divorce and separation, and I think nobody will say a child may withhold honor from his mother, or, as the scripture terms it, set light by her, though his Father should command him to do so. No more than the mother could dispense with him for neglecting to honor his Father, whereby it is plain that this command of God gives the Father no sovereignty, no supremacy. I agree with our author that the title to this honor is vested in the parents by nature, and is a right which accrues to them by their having begotten their children, and God, by many positive declarations, has confirmed it to them. I also allow our author's rule, that in grants and gifts that have their original from God and nature, as the power of the Father, let me add, and mother, for whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder, no inferior power of men can limit, nor make any law of prescription against them. Observations 158. So that the mother, having by this law of God, a right to honor from her children, which is not subject to the will of her husband, we see this absolute monarchical power of the Father can neither be founded on it, nor consist with it. And he has a power very far from monarchical, very far from that absoluteness our author contends for, when another has over his subject the same power he hath, and by the same title. And therefore he cannot forbear saying himself, that he cannot see how any man's children can be free from subjection to their parents, page 12, which in common speech, I think, signifies mother as well as father, or if parents here signifies only Father, it is the first time I ever yet knew it to do so, and by such in use of words one may say anything. By our author's doctrine the Father having absolute jurisdiction over his children has also the same over their issue, and the consequences good were it true that the Father had such a power, and yet I ask our author whether the grandfather by his sovereignty could discharge the grandchild from paying to his father the honor due to him by the fifth commandment. If the grandfather hath by right of fatherhood soul sovereign power in him, and that obedience which is due to the supreme magistrate be commanded in these words honor thy father, it is certain the grandfather might dispense with the grandson's honoring his father, which since it is evident in common sense he cannot, it follows from hence that honor thy father and mother cannot mean an absolute subjection to a sovereign power, but something else. The right therefore which parents have by nature and which is confirmed to them by the fifth commandment cannot be that political dominion which our author would derive from it, for that being in every civil society supreme somewhere can discharge any subject from any political obedience to any one of his fellow subjects, but what law of the magistrate can give a child liberty not to honor his father and mother? It is an eternal law annexed purely to the relation of parents and children, and so contains nothing of the magistrate's power in it, nor is subjected to it. Our author says, God hath given to a father a right or liberty to alien his power over his children to any other—observations 155. I doubt whether he can alien wholly the right of honor that is due from them, but be that as it will, this I am sure he cannot alien and retain the same power. If therefore the magistrate's sovereignty be as our author would have it, nothing but the authority of a supreme father, page 23, it is unavoidable that if the magistrate hath all this paternal right, as he must have if fatherhood be the fountain of all authority, then the subjects, though fathers, can have no power over their children, no right to honor from them, for it cannot be all in another's hands and apart remain with the parents. So that according to our author's own doctrine, honor thy father and mother cannot possibly be understood of political subjection and obedience, since the laws both in the old and new testament that commanded children to honor and obey their parents were given to such whose fathers were under civil government and fellow subjects with them in political societies, and have bid them honor and obey their parents, in our author's sense, had been to bid them be subjects to those who had no title to it, the right to obedience from subjects being all vested in another, and instead of teaching obedience this had been to cement sedition by setting up powers that were not. If therefore this command, honor thy father and mother, concern political dominion, it directly overthrows our author's monarchy, since it being to be paid by every child to his father, even in society every father must necessarily have political dominion, and there will be as many sovereigns as there are fathers, besides that the mother too had her title, which destroys the sovereignty of one supreme monarch. But if honor thy father and mother means something distinct from political power, as necessarily it must, it is besides our author's business, and serves nothing to his purpose. The law that enjoins obedience to kings is delivered, says our author, in the terms honor thy father, as if all power were originally in the father, observations 254, and that law is also delivered, say I, in the terms honor thy mother, as if all power were originally in the mother. I appeal whether the argument may not be as good on one side as the other, father and mother being joined all along in the Old and New Testament, wherever honor or obedience is enjoined children. Again our author tells us, observations 254, that this command honor thy father, gives the right to govern, and makes the form of government monarchical. To which I answer that if by honor thy father be meant obedience to the political power of the magistrate, it concerns not any duty we owe to our natural fathers, who are subjects, because they, by our author's doctrine, are divested of all that power, it being placed wholly in the prince, and so being equally subject and slaves with their children can have no right by that title to any such honor or obedience, as contains in it political subjection. If honor thy father and mother signifies the duty we owe our natural parents, as by our saviour's interpretation, Matthew 15.4, and all the other mentioned places, it is plain it does, then it cannot concern political obedience, but a duty that is owing to persons who have no title to sovereignty nor any political authority as magistrates over subjects. For the person of a private father, and a title to obedience due to the supreme magistrate, are things inconsistent, and therefore this command, which must necessarily comprehend the persons of our natural fathers, must mean a duty we owe them distinct from our obedience to the magistrate, and from which the most absolute power of princes cannot absolve us. What this duty is, we tell in its due place examine. And thus we have at last got through all that in our author looks like an argument for that absolute unlimited sovereignty, described Section 8, which he supposes in Adam, so that mankind ever since have been all-born slaves without any title to freedom. But if creation, which gave nothing but a being, made not Adam prince of his posterity, if Adam, Genesis 128, was not constituted lord of mankind, nor had a private dominion given him exclusive of his children, but only a right and power over the earth, and inferior creatures in common with the children of men, if also, Genesis 3.16, God gave not any political power to Adam over his wife and children, but only subjected Eve to Adam as a punishment, or foretold the subjection of the weaker sex in the ordering the common concerns of their families, but gave not thereby to Adam as to the husband power of life and death, which necessarily belongs to the magistrate. If fathers by begetting their children acquire no such power over them, and if the command, honor thy father and mother, give it not, but only enjoins a duty owing to parents equally whether subjects or not, and to the mother as well as the father, if all this be so, as I think by what has been said is very evident, then man has a natural freedom, notwithstanding all our author confidently says to the contrary. Since all that share in the same common nature faculties and powers are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the same common rights and privileges, till the manifest appointment of God, who is Lord over all blessed for ever, can be produced to show any particular person's supremacy, or a man's own consent subjects him to a superior. This is so plain that our author confesses that Sir John Haywood, Blackwood, and Barkley, the great vindicators of the right of kings, could not deny it, but admit with one consent the natural liberty and equality of mankind, for a truth unquestionable. And our author have been so far from producing anything that may make good his great position that Adam was absolute monarch, and so men are not naturally free, that even his own proofs make against him, so that to use his own way of arguing, the first erroneous principle failing, the whole fabric of this vast engine of absolute power and tyranny, drops down of itself, and there needs no more to be said in answer to all that he builds upon so false and frail a foundation. But to save others the pains, were there any need, he is not sparing himself to show by his own contradictions the weakness of his own doctrine. Adam's absolute and sole dominion is that which he is everywhere full of, and all along builds on, and yet he tells us, page twelve, that as Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a command and power over their own children. The unlimited and undivided sovereignty of Adam's fatherhood by our author's computation stood but a little while, only during the first generation, but as soon as he had grandchildren, Sir Robert could give but a very ill account of it. Adam, as father of his children, said he, have an absolute unlimited royal power over them, and by virtue thereof over those that they begot, and so to all generations. And yet his children, vis Cain and Seth, have a paternal power over their children at the same time, so that they are at the same time absolute lords and yet vassals and slaves. Adam has all the authority as grandfather of the people, and they have a part of it as fathers of a part of them. He is absolute over them and their posterity by having begotten them, and yet they are absolute over their children by the same title. No, says our author. Adam's children under him had power over their own children, but still with subordination to the first parent. A good distinction that sounds well, and it is pity it signifies nothing, nor can be reconciled with our author's words. I readily grant that supposing Adam's absolute power over his posterity, any of his children might have from him a delegated and so a subordinate power over a part, or all the rest. But that cannot be the power our author speaks of here. It is not a power by grant and commission, but the natural paternal power he supposes a father to have over his children. For one, he says, as Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a power over their children. They were then lords over their own children after the same manner and by the same title that Adam was, i.e., by right of generation, by right of fatherhood. Two, it is plain he means the natural power of fathers, because he limits it to be only over their own children. A delegated power has no such limitation as only over their own children. It might be over others as well as their own children. Three, if it were a delegated power it must appear in scripture, but there is no ground in scripture to affirm that Adam's children had any other power over theirs than what they naturally had as fathers. But that he means here paternal power and no other is passed out from the inference he makes in these words immediately following. I see not then how the children of Adam or of any man else can be free from subjection to their parents. Whereby it appears that the power on one side and the subjection on the other, our author here speaks of, is that natural power and subjection between parents and children, for that which every man's children owed could be no other, and that our author always affirms to be absolute and unlimited. This natural power of parents over their children, Adam had over his posterity, says our author, and this power of parents over their children, his children had over theirs in his lifetime, says our author also. So that Adam, by a natural right of father, had an absolute unlimited power of all his posterity, and at the same time his children had by the same right absolute unlimited power over theirs. Here then are two absolute unlimited powers existing together, which I would have anybody reconcile one to another or to common sense. For the salvo he has put in of subordination makes it more absurd. To have one absolute unlimited, nay, unlimited power in subordination to another is so manifest a contradiction that nothing can be more. Adam is absolute prince with the unlimited authority of fatherhood over all his posterity. All his posterity are then absolutely his subjects, and as our author says, his slaves, children and grandchildren are equally in this state of subjection and slavery. And yet, says our author, the children of Adam have paternal, i.e. absolute unlimited power over their own children, which in plain English is they are slaves and absolute princes at the same time and in the same government, and one part of the subjects have an absolute unlimited power over the other, by the natural right of parentage. If anyone will suppose, in favour of our author, that he here meant that parents who are in subjection themselves to the absolute authority of their father have yet some power over their children, I confess he is something nearer the truth, but he will not at all hereby help our author. For he, nowhere speaking of the paternal power but as an absolute unlimited authority, cannot be supposed to understand anything else here, unless he himself had limited it and showed how far it reached. And that he means here paternal authority in that large extent is plain from the immediate following words. This subjection of children being, says he, the foundation of all regal authority, page 12. The subjection then that in the former line he says every man is into his parents, and consequently what Adam's grandchildren were into their parents was that which was the fountain of all regal authority, i.e., according to our author, absolute unlimited authority. And thus Adam's children had regal authority over their children, whilst they themselves were subjects to their father and fellow subjects with their children. But let him mean as he pleases. It is plain he allows Adam's children to have paternal power, page 12, as also all other fathers to have paternal power over their children, observations 156. From whence one of these two things will necessarily follow that either Adam's children, even in his lifetime, had and so all other fathers have, as he phrases it, page 12, by right of fatherhood royal authority over their children, or else that Adam by right of fatherhood had not royal authority. For it cannot be but that paternal power does or does not give royal authority to them that have it. If it does not, then Adam could not be sovereign by this title nor anybody else, and then there is an end of all our author's politics at once. If it does give royal authority, then every one that has paternal power has royal authority, and then, by our author's patriarchal government, there will be as many kings as there are fathers. And thus what a monarchy he hath set up let him and his disciples consider. Princes certainly will have great reason to thank him for these new politics, which set up as many absolute kings in every country as there are fathers of children. And yet who can blame our author for it, it lying unavoidably in the way of one discoursing upon our author's principles, for having placed an absolute power in fathers by right of begetting, he could not easily resolve how much of this power belonged to a son over the children he had begotten, and so it fell out to be a very hard matter to give all the power, as he does, to Adam, and yet allow a part in his lifetime to his children when they were parents, and which he knew not well how to deny them. This makes him so doubtful in his expressions, and so uncertain where to place this absolute natural power which he calls fatherhood. Sometimes Adam alone has it all as page 13, observations 244, 245, and preface. Sometimes parents have it, which word scarce signifies the father alone, page 12, 19. Sometimes children during their father's lifetime as page 12. Sometimes fathers of families, as page 78 and 79. Sometimes fathers indefinitely, observations 155. Sometimes the heir to Adam, observations 253. Sometimes the posterity of Adam, 244, 246. Sometimes prime fathers, all sons or grandchildren of Noah, observations 244. Sometimes the eldest parents, page 12. Sometimes all kings, page 19. Sometimes all that have supreme power, observations 245. Sometimes heirs to those first progenitors who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, page 19. Sometimes an elective king, page 23. Sometimes those with a few or a multitude that govern the commonwealth, page 23. Sometimes he that can catch it, and usurper, page 23, observations 155. Thus this new nothing that is to carry with it all power, authority, and government, this fatherhood, which is to design the person and establish the throne of monarchs, whom the people are to obey, may, according to Sir Robert, come into any hands, anyhow. And so by his politics give to democracy, royal authority, and make an usurper a lawful prince. And if it will do all these fine feats, much good do our author and all his followers with their omnipotent fatherhood, which can serve for nothing but to unsettle and destroy all the lawful governments in the world, and to establish in their room disorder, tyranny, and usurpation. End of Chapter 6. Book 1, Chapter 7 of Two Treatises of Civil Government. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa. Two Treatises of Civil Government by John Locke. Book 1, Chapter 7. Of Fatherhood and Property, Considered Together as Fountains of Sovereignty. In the full-going chapters we have seen what Adam's monarchy was, in our author's opinion, and upon what titles he founded it. The foundations which he lays the chief stress on, as those from which he thinks he may best derive monarchical power to future princes, are two—Viz, Fatherhood, and Property—and therefore the way he proposes to remove the absurdities and inconveniences of the doctrine of natural freedom, is to maintain the natural and private dominion of Adam—Observations 222. Conformable hereunto, he tells us, the grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property—Observations 108. The subjection of children to their parents is the fountain of all regal authority—Page 12—and all power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, there being no other original to be found of any power whatsoever—Observations 158. I will not stand here to examine how it can be said without a contradiction that the first grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property, and yet that there is no other original of any power whatsoever but that of the father—it being hard to understand how there can be no other original but Fatherhood, and yet that the grounds and principles of government depend upon the original of property—Property and Fatherhood being as far different as Lord of a Manor and Father of children. Nor do I see how they will either of them agree with what our author says—Observations 244—of God's sentence against Eve, Genesis 316—that it is the original grant of government—so that if that were the original, government had not its original by our author's own confession, either from property or Fatherhood, and this text, which he brings as a proof of Adam's power over Eve, necessarily contradicts what he says of the Fatherhood—that it is the sole fountain of all power—for if Adam had any such regal power over Eve as our author contends for, it must be by some other title than that of begetting. But I leave him to reconcile these contradictions, as well as many others, which may be plentifully found in him by any one who will but read him with little attention, and shall now come to consider how these two originals of government, Adam's natural and private dominion, will consist, and serve to make out and establish the titles of succeeding monarchs, who, as our author obliges them, must all derive their power from these fountains. Let us then suppose Adam, made by God's donation, Lord and sole proprietor of the whole earth, in as large and ample a manner a Sir Robert could wish. Let us suppose him also, by right of Fatherhood, absolute ruler over his children with an unlimited supremacy. I ask then, upon Adam's death, what becomes of both his natural and private dominion? And I doubt not it will be answered that they descend to his next air, as our author tells us in several places. But this way it is plain, cannot possibly convey both his natural and private dominion to the same person, for should we allow that all the property, all the estate of the Father, ought to descend to the eldest son, which will need some proof to establish it, and so he has by that title all the private dominion of the Father. Yet the Father's natural dominion, the paternal power, cannot descend to him by inheritance, for it being a right that accrues to a man only by begetting, no man can have this natural dominion over any one he does not beget. Unless it can be supposed that a man can have a right to anything, without doing that upon which the right is solely founded, for if a Father, by begetting and no other title, has natural dominion over his children, he that does not beget them cannot have this natural dominion over them, and therefore be it true or false that our author says, Observations 156, that every man that is born by his very birth becomes a subject to him that begets him, this necessarily follows. This, that a man by his birth cannot become a subject to his brother, who did not beget him, unless it can be supposed that a man by the very same title can come to be under the natural and absolute dominion of two different men at once, or it be sensed to say that a man by birth is under the natural dominion of his Father, only because he beget him, and a man by birth also is under the natural dominion of his eldest brother, although he did not beget him. If then the private dominion of Adam, i.e. his property in the creatures, descended at his death all entirely to his eldest son, his heir, for if it did not, there is presently an end of all Sir Robert's monarchy. And his natural dominion, the dominion a Father has over his children by begetting them, belonged immediately upon Adam's decease, equally to all his sons who had children, by the same title their Father had it, the sovereignty founded upon property, and the sovereignty founded upon Fatherhood come to be divided, since Cain as heir had that of property alone, Seth and the other sons that of Fatherhood equally with him. This is the best that can be made of our author's doctrine, and of the two titles of sovereignty he sets up in Adam, one of them will either signify nothing, or if they both must stand, they can serve only to confound the rights of princes and disorder government in his posterity, for by building upon two titles to dominion which cannot descend together, and which he allows may be separated, for he yields that Adam's children had their distinct territories by right of private dominion, Observations 210, page 40, he makes it perpetually a doubt upon his principles where the sovereignty is, or to whom we owe our obedience, since Fatherhood and property are distinct titles, and began presently upon Adam's death to be in distinct persons, and which then was to give way to the other. Let us take the account of it as he himself gives it us. He tells us, out of grotesque, that Adam's children by donation, asignation, or some kind of session before he was dead, had their distinct territories by right of private dominion. Abel had his flocks and pastures for them, Cain had his fields for corn, and the land of Nod where he built him a city, Observations 210. Here it is obvious to demand which of these two after Adam's death was sovereign. Cain says our author, page 19, by what title? As heir, for heirs to progenitors who were natural parents of their people, are not only lords of their own children, but also of their brethren, says our author, page 19. What was Cain heir to? Not the entire possessions, not all that which Adam had private dominion in, for our author allows that Abel, by a title derived from his father, had his distinct territory for pasture by right of private dominion. What then Abel had by private dominion was exempt from Cain's dominion, for he could not have private dominion over that which was under the private dominion of another, and therefore his sovereignty over his brother is gone with this private dominion. And so there are presently two sovereigns, and his imaginary title of fatherhood is out of doors, and Cain is no prince over his brother, or else if Cain retain his sovereignty over Abel, not withstanding his private dominion, it will follow that the first grounds and principles of government have nothing to do with property, whatever our author says to the contrary. It is true, Abel did not outlive his father, Adam, but that makes nothing to the argument which will hold good against Sir Robert in Abel's issue, or in Seth, or in any of the posterity of Adam not descended from Cain. The same inconvenience he runs into about the three sons of Noah, who, as he says, page 13, had the whole world divided amongst them by their father. I ask, then, in which of the three shall we find the establishment of regal power after Noah's death? If in all three, as our author there seems to say, then it will follow that regal power is founded in property of land, and follows private dominion, and not in paternal power or natural dominion, and so there is an end of paternal power as the fountain of regal authority, and the so much magnified fatherhood quite vanishes. If the regal power descended to Shem as eldest and heir to his father, then Noah's division of the world by lot to his sons, or his ten years sailing about the Mediterranean to appoint each son his part, which our author tells of page 15, was labour lost. His division of the world to them was to ill or to no purpose. For his grant to come and jaffet was little worth, if Shem notwithstanding this grant, as soon as Noah was dead, was to be lured over them. Or if this grant of private dominion to them over their assigned territories were good, here were set up two distinct sorts of power, not subordinate one to the other, with all those inconveniences which he musters up against the power of the people, Observations 158, which I shall set down in his own words, only changing property for people. All power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, there being no other original to be found of any power whatsoever. For if there should be granted two sorts of power, without any subordination of one to the other, they would be in perpetual strife which should be supreme, for two Supremes cannot agree. If the fatherly power be supreme, then the power grounded on private dominion must be subordinate and depend on it, and if the power grounded on property be supreme, then the fatherly power must submit to it and cannot be exercised without the license of the proprietors, which must quite destroy the frame and course of nature. This is his own arguing against two distinct independent powers, which I have set down in his own words, only putting power rising from property for power of the people. And when he has answered what he himself has urged here against two distinct powers, we shall be better able to see how, with any tolerable sense, he can derive all regular authority from the natural and private dominion of Adam, from fatherhood and property together, which are distinct titles that do not always meet in the same person, and it is plain by his own confession presently separated as soon both as Adam's and Noah's death made way for succession. Though our author frequently in his writings jumbles them together, and omits not to make use of either where he thinks it will sound best to his purpose. But the absurdities of this will more fully appear in the next chapter, where we shall examine the ways of conveyance of the sovereignty of Adam to princes that were to reign after him. Sir Robert, having not been very happy in any proof he brings for the sovereignty of Adam, is not much more fortunate in conveying it to future princes, who, if his politics be true, must all derive their titles from that first monarch. The ways he has assigned, as they lie, scattered up and down in his writings, I will set down in his own words. In his preface he tells us that Adam, being monarch of the whole world, none of his posterity had any right to possess anything but by his grant or permission or by succession from him. Here he makes two ways of conveyance of anything Adam stood possessed of, and those are grants or succession. Again he says, all kings either are, or are to be reputed, the next heirs to those first progenitors who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, page 19. There cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, but that in it, considered by itself, there is one man amongst them that in nature have the right to be the king of all the rest, as being the next heir to Adam, Observations 253. Here in these places inheritance is the only way he allows of conveying monarchical power to princes. In other places he tells us, Observations 155, all power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, Observations 158. All kings that now are or ever were, are or were either fathers of their people or heirs of such fathers or usurpers of the right of such fathers, Observations 253. And here he makes inheritance or usurpation, the only ways whereby kings come by this original power. But yet he tells us, this fatherly empire as it was of itself hereditary, so it was alienable by patent and caesable by usurper, Observations 190. So then here inheritance, grant or usurpation will convey it. And last of all, which is most admirable, he tells us page 100. It skills not which way kings come by their power, whether by election, donation, succession, or by any other means, for it is still the manner of the government by supreme power that makes them properly kings, and not the means of obtaining their crowns. Which I think is a full answer to all his whole hypothesis and discourse about Adam's royal authority, as the fountain from which all princes were to derive theirs, and he might have spared the trouble of speaking so much as he does up and down of heirs and inheritance, if to make any one, properly a king, needs no more but governing by supreme power, and it matters not by what means he came by it. By this notable way our author may make Oliver as properly king as any one else he could think of, and had he had the happiness to live under Masanello's government, he could not by this his own rule have foreborn to have done homage to him, with O. King live forever, since the manner of his government by supreme power made him properly king, who was but the day before properly a fisherman. And if Don Quixote had taught his squire to govern with supreme authority, our author no doubt could have made a most loyal subject in Sancho Pansa's island, and he must needs have deserved some preferment in such governments, since I think he is the first politician who, pretending to settle government upon its true basis, and to establish the thrones of lawful princes, ever told the world that he was properly a king whose manner of government was by supreme power by what means so ever he obtained it, which in plain English is to say that regal and supreme power is properly and truly his who can by any means seize upon it, and if this be to be properly a king, I wonder how he came to think of or where he will find and usurper. This is so strange a doctrine that the surprise of it have made me pass by without their due reflection the contradictions he runs into by making sometimes inheritance alone, sometimes only grant or inheritance, sometimes only inheritance or usurpation, sometimes all these three, and at last election or any other means added to them, the ways whereby Adam's royal authority, that is his right to supreme rule, could be conveyed down to future kings and governors, so as to give them a title to the obedience and subjection of the people. But these contradictions lie so open that the very reading of our author's own words will discover them to any ordinary understanding, and though what I have quoted out of him, with abundance more of the same strain and coherence which might be found in him, might well excuse me from any farther trouble in this argument, yet, having proposed to myself to examine the main parts of his doctrine, I shall a little more particularly consider how inheritance, grant, usurpation, or election can anyway make out government in the world upon his principles, or derive to any one a right of empire from this regal authority and Adam, had it been never so well proved that he had been an absolute monarch and lord of the whole world. CHAPTER IX Though it be never so plain that there ought to be government in the world, nay, should all men be of our author's mind that divine appointment had ordained it to be monarchical, yet since men cannot obey anything that cannot command, and ideas of government in the fancy, though never so perfect, though never so right, cannot give laws nor prescribe rules to the actions of men, it would be of no behoof for the settling of order and establishment of government in its exercise and use amongst men, unless there were a way also taught how to know the person to whom it belonged to have this power, and to exercise this dominion over others. It is in vain, then, to talk of subjection and obedience without telling us whom we are to obey, for were I never so fully persuaded that there ought to be magistracy and rule in the world, yet I am nevertheless at liberty still till it appears who is the person that hath right to my obedience, since if there be no marks to know him by, and distinguish him that hath right to rule from other men, it may be myself as well as any other. And therefore, though submission to government be every one's duty, yet since that signifies nothing but submitting to the direction and laws of such men as have authority to command, it is not enough to make a man a subject to convince him that there is regal power in the world, but there must be ways of designing and knowing the person to whom this regal power of right belongs, and a man can never be obliged in conscience to submit to any power unless he can be satisfied who is the person who has a right to exercise that power over him. If this were not so, there would be no distinction between pirates and lawful princes. He that has forces without any more ado to be obeyed, and crowns and sceptres would become the inheritance only of violence and rapping. Men, too, might as often and as innocently change their governors as they do their physicians, if the person cannot be known who has a right to direct me and whose prescriptions I am bound to follow. To settle therefore men's consciences under an obligation to obedience, it is necessary that they know not only that there is a power somewhere in the world, but the person who by right is vested with this power over them. How successful our author has been in his attempts to set up a monarchical absolute power in Adam, the reader may judge by what has been already said. But were that absolute monarchy as clear as our author would desire it, as I presume it is on the contrary, yet it could be of no use to the government of mankind now in the world, unless he also make out these two things. First, that this power of Adam was not to end with him, but was upon his decease conveyed entire to some other person and so on to posterity. Secondly, that the princes and rulers now on earth are possessed of this power of Adam by a right way of conveyance derived to them. If the first of these fail, the power of Adam were it never so great, never so certain, will signify nothing to the present government and societies in the world, but we must seek out some other original of power for the government of the polities than this of Adam, or else there will be none at all in the world. If the latter fail, it will destroy the authority of the present governors and absolve the people from subjection to them, since they, having no better acclaim than others to that power which is alone the fountain of all authority, can have no title to rule over them. Our author, having fancied an absolute sovereignty in Adam, mentioned several ways of its conveyance to princes that were to be his successors, but that which he chiefly insists on is that of inheritance, which occurs so often in his several discourses, and I having in the foregoing chapter quoted several of these passages, I shall not need here again to repeat them. This sovereignty he erects, as has been said upon a double foundation, is that of property and that of fatherhood. One was the right he was supposed to have in all creatures a right to possess the earth with the beasts and other inferior ranks of things in it for his private use exclusive of all other men. The other was the right he was supposed to have to rule and govern men, all the rest of mankind. In both these rights there being supposed an exclusion of all other men, it must be upon some reason peculiar to Adam that they must both be founded. That of his property our author supposes to arise from God's immediate donation, Genesis 128, and that of fatherhood from the act of begetting. Now, in all inheritance, if the heir succeed not to the reason upon which his father's right was founded, he cannot succeed to the right which followeth from it. For example, Adam had a right of property in the creatures upon the donation and grant of God Almighty, who was Lord and proprietor of them all. Let this be so as our author tells us. Yet upon his death his heir can have no title to them, no such right of property in them, unless the same reason, vis God's donation, vested a right in the heir too. For if Adam could have had no property in nor use of the creatures without this positive donation from God, and this donation were only personally to Adam, his heir could have no right by it, but upon his death it must revert to God the Lord and owner again. For positive grants give no title farther than the express words convey it, and by which only it is held. And thus if, as our author himself contends, that donation, Genesis 1.28, were made only to Adam personally, his heir could not succeed to his property in the creatures, and if it were a donation to any but Adam, let it be shown that it was to his heir in our author's sense, i.e. to one of his children, exclusive of all the rest. But not to follow our author too far out of the way, the plain of the case is this. God having made man, and planted in him, as in all other animals, a strong desire of self-preservation, and furnished the world with things fit for food and raiment, and other necessaries of life, subservient to his design, that man should live and abide for some time upon the face of the earth, and not that so curious and wonderful a piece of workmanship, by his own negligence or want of necessaries, should perish again, presently after a few moments' continuance, God, I say, having made man and the world thus, spoke to him, that is, directed him by his senses and reason, as he did the inferior animals by their sense and instinct, which were serviceable for his subsistence, and given him as the means of his preservation. And therefore I doubt not, but before these words were pronounced, won Genesis 28-29, if they must be understood literally to have been spoken, and without any such verbal donation. Man had a right to induce of the creatures by the will and grant of God, for the desire, strong desire of preserving his life and being, having been planted in him as a principle of action by God himself, reason which was the voice of God in him, could not but teach him and assure him that pursuing that natural inclination he had to preserve his being, he followed the will of his maker, and therefore had a right to make use of those creatures, which by his reason or senses he could discover would be serviceable thereunto. And thus man's property in the creatures was founded upon the right he had to make use of those things that were necessary or useful to his being. This being the reason and foundation of Adam's property gave the same title on the same ground to all his children, not only after his death but in his lifetime, so that here was no privilege of his heir above his other children, which could exclude them from an equal right to the use of the inferior creatures for the comfortable preservation of their beings, which is all the property man hath in them. And so Adam's sovereignty built on property, or as our author calls it, private dominion, comes to nothing. Every man had a right to the creatures by the same title Adam had, vis by the right every one had to take care of and provide for their subsistence, and thus men had a right in common, Adam's children in common with him. But if any one had begun and made himself a property in any particular thing, which how he or any one else could do shall be shown in another place, that thing, that possession, if he disposed not otherwise of it by his positive grant, descended naturally to his children, and they had a right to succeed in it and possess it. It might reasonably be asked here how come children by this right of possessing before any other the properties of their parents upon their decease? For it being personally the parents, when they die without actually transferring their right to another, why does it not return again to the common stock of mankind? It will perhaps be answered that common consent hath disposed of it to their children. Common practice we see indeed does so dispose of it. But we cannot say that it is the common consent of mankind, for that hath never been asked, nor actually given. And if common tacit consent hath established it, it would make but a positive and not a natural right of children to inherit the goods of their parents. But where the practice is universal it is reasonable to think the cause is natural. The ground, then, I think, to be this. The first and strongest desire God planted in men, and wrought into the very principles of their nature, being that of self-preservation, that is the foundation of a right to the creatures for the particular support and use of each individual person himself. But next to this God planted in men a strong desire also of propagating their kind and continuing themselves in their posterity. And this gives children a title to share in the property of their parents and a right to inherit their possessions. Men are not proprietors of what they have merely for themselves. Their children have a title to part of it, and have their kind of right joined with their parents, in the possession which comes to be wholly theirs, when death, having put an end to their parents' use of it, hath taken them from their possessions. And this we call inheritance. Men being by a like obligation bound to preserve what they have begotten as to preserve themselves, their issue come to have a right in the goods they are possessed of. That children have such a right is plain from the laws of God, and that men are convinced that children have such a right is evident from the law of the land, both which laws require parents to provide for their children. For children, being by the course of nature born weak and unable to provide for themselves, they have by the appointment of God himself, who have thus ordered the course of nature, a right to be nourished and maintained by their parents. Nay, a right not only to bear subsistence, but to the conveniences and comforts of life, as far as the conditions of their parents can afford it. Hence it comes that when their parents leave the world, and so the care due to their children ceases, the effects of it are to extend as far as possibly they can, and the provisions they have made in their lifetime are understood to be intended, as nature requires they should, for their children, whom after themselves they are bound to provide for. Though the dying parents by express words declare nothing about them, nature appoints the descent of their property to their children, who thus come to have a title and natural right of inheritance to their father's goods, which the rest of mankind cannot pretend to. Were it not for this right of being nourished and maintained by their parents, which God and nature has given to children and obliged parents to as a duty, it would be reasonable that the father should inherit the estate of his son, and be preferred in the inheritance before his grandchild, for to the grandfather there is due a long score of care and expenses laid out upon the breeding and education of his son, which one would think injustice ought to be paid. But that having been done in obedience to the same law whereby he received nourishment and education from his own parents, this score of education received from a man's father is paid by taking care and providing for his own children. Is paid, I say, as much as is required of payment by alteration of property, unless present necessity of the parents require a return of goods for their necessary support and subsistence, for we are not now speaking of that reverence, acknowledgement, respect, and honour that is always due from children to their parents, but of possessions and commodities of life valuable by money. But though it be incumbent on parents to bring up and provide for their children, yet this debt to their children does not quite cancel the score due to their parents, but only is made by nature preferable to it. For the debt a man owes to his father takes place and gives the father a right to inherit the son's goods, where for want of issue the right of children does not exclude that title. And therefore a man having a right to be maintained by his children where he needs it, and to enjoy also the comforts of life from them when the necessary provision due to them and their children will afford it, if his son die without issue, the father has a right in nature to possess his goods and inherit his estate, whatever the municipal rules of some countries may absurdly direct otherwise. And so again his children and their issue from him, or for want of such his father and his issue. But where no such are to be found, i.e. no kindred, there we see the possessions of a private man revert to the community, and so in politics societies come into the hands of the public magistrate, but in the state of nature become again perfectly common nobody having a right to inherit them, nor can anyone have a property in them otherwise than in other things common by nature, of which I shall speak in its due place. I have been the larger in showing upon what ground children have a right to succeed to the possession of their father's properties, not only because by it it will appear that if Adam had a property, a titular insignificant useless property, for it could be no better, for he was bound to nourish and maintain his children and posterity out of it, in the whole earth and its product, yet all his children coming to have, by the law of nature and right of inheritance, a joint title and right of property in it after his death, it could convey no right of sovereignty to any one of his posterity over the rest, since every one having a right of inheritance to his portion, they might enjoy their inheritance, or any part of it in common, or share it, or some parts of it by division, as it best liked them. But no one could pretend to the whole inheritance, or any sovereignty supposed to accompany it, since a right of inheritance gave every one of the rest, as well as any one, a title to share in the goods of his father. Not only upon this account, I say, have I been so particular in examining the reason of children's inheriting the property of their fathers, but also because it will give us farther light in the inheritance of rule and power, which in countries where their particular municipal laws give the whole possession of land entirely to the first-born, and dissent of power has gone so to men by this custom, some have been apt to be deceived into an opinion that there was a natural or divine right of primogeniture to both state and power, and that the inheritance of both rule over men and property in things sprang from the same original and were to descend by the same rules. Property, whose original is from the right a man has to use any of the inferior creatures for the subsistence and comfort of his life, is for the benefit and sole advantage of the proprietor, so that he may even destroy the thing that he has a property in by his use of it when need requires. But government, being for the preservation of every man's right and property, by preserving him from the violence or injury of others, is for the good of the governed. For the magistrate's sword being for a terror to evildoers, and by that terror to enforce men to observe the positive laws of the society made conformable to the laws of nature for the public good, i.e. the good of every particular member of that society, as far as by common rules it can be provided for. The sword is not given the magistrate for his own good alone. Children, therefore, as has been showed, by the dependence they have on their parents for subsistence, have a right of inheritance to their father's property, as that which belongs to them for their proper good and behoove, and therefore are fitly termed goods, wherein the firstborn has not a soul or peculiar right by any law of God and nature. The younger children, having an equal title with him, founded on that right they all have to maintenance, support, and comfort from their parents, and on nothing else. But government, being for the benefit of the governed, and not the sole advantage of the governors, but only for theirs with the rest as they make a part of that politic body each of whose parts and members are taken care of and directed in its peculiar functions for the good of the whole, by the laws of society, cannot be inherited by the same title that children have to the goods of their father. The right a son has to be maintained and provided with the necessaries and conveniences of life out of his father's stock gives him a right to succeed to his father's property for his own good. But this can give him no right to succeed also to the rule which his father had over other men. All that a child has right to claim from his father is nourishment and education, and the things nature furnishes for the support of life. But he has no right to demand rule or dominion from him. He can subsist and receive from him the portion of good things and advantages of education naturally due to him without empire and dominion. That, if his father hath any, was vested in him for the good and behoove of others, and therefore the son cannot claim or inherit it by a title which is founded wholly upon his own private good and advantage. We must know how the first ruler from whom any one claims came by his authority, upon what ground any one has empire, what his title is to it, before we can know who has a right to succeed him in it and inherit it from him. If the agreement and consent of men first gave a scepter into any one's hand or put a crown on his head, that also must direct its dissent and conveyance. For the same authority that made the first a lawful ruler must make the second too, and so give right of succession. In this case inheritance or primogenity can in itself have no right, no pretense to it, any farther than that consent which established the form of the government, hath so settled the succession. And thus we see the succession of crowns in several countries, places it on different heads, and he comes by right of succession to be a prince in one place, who would be a subject in another. If God by his positive grant and revealed declaration first gave rule and dominion to any man, he that will claim by that title must have the same positive grant of God for his succession. For if that has not directed the course of its dissent and conveyance down to others, nobody can succeed to this title of the first ruler. Children have no right of inheritance to this, and primogenity can lay no claim to it, unless God, the author of this constitution, hath so ordained it. Thus we see the pretensions of Saul's family, who received his crown from the immediate appointment of God, ended with his reign. And David by the same title that Saul reigned, vis God's appointment, succeeded in his throne to the exclusion of Jonathan and all pretensions of paternal inheritance. And if Solomon had a right to succeed his father, it must be by some other title than that of primogenity. A cadet or sister's son must have the preference in succession, if he has the same title the first lawful prince had, and in dominion that has its foundation only in the positive appointment of God himself, Benjamin the youngest, must have the inheritance of the crown if God so direct, as well as one of that tribe had the first possession. If paternal right, the act of begetting, give a man rule and dominion, inheritance or primogenity can give no title, for he that cannot succeed to his father's title, which was begetting, cannot succeed to that power over his brethren, which his father had by paternal right over them. But of this I shall have occasion to say more in another place. This is plain in the meantime, that in any government, whether supposed to be at first founded in paternal right, consent of the people, or the positive appointment of God himself, which can supersede either of the other, and so begin a new government upon a new foundation, I say any government began upon either of these can, by right of succession, come to those only who have the title of him they succeed to. Power founded on contract can descend only to him who has right by that contract. Power founded on begetting he only can have that begets, and power founded on the positive grant or donation of God he only can have by right of succession to whom that grant directs it. From what I have said I think this is clear, that a right to use of the creatures being founded originally in the right a man has to subsist and enjoy the conveniences of life, and the natural right children have to inherit the goods of their parents being founded in the right they have to the same subsistence and commodities of life out of the stock of their parents, who are therefore taught by natural love and tenderness to provide for them as a part of themselves, and all this being only for the good of the proprietor or heir, it can be no reason for children's inheriting of rule and dominion, which has another original and a different end. Nor can primogenity have any pretense to a right of solely inheriting either property or power as we shall in its due place see more fully. It is enough to have showed here that Adam's property or private dominion could not convey any sovereignty or rule to his heir, who not having a right to inherit all his father's possessions, could not thereby come to have any sovereignty over his brethren, and therefore if any sovereignty on account of his property had been vested in Adam, which in truth there was not, yet it would have died with him. As Adam's sovereignty, if by virtue of being proprietor of the world he had any authority over men, could not have been inherited by any of his children over the rest, because they had the same title to divide the inheritance, and every one had a right to a portion of his father's possessions, so neither could Adam's sovereignty by right of fatherhood, if any such he had, descend to any one of his children. For it being in our author's account a right acquired by begetting to rule over those he had begotten, it was not a power possible to be inherited, because the right being consequent to and built on and act perfectly personal made that power so too, and impossible to be inherited. For paternal power being a natural right rising only from the relation of father to son is as impossible to be inherited as the relation itself, and a man may pretend as well to inherit the conjugal power the husband whose heir he is had over his wife, as he can to inherit the paternal power of a father over his children. For the power of the husband being founded on contract, and the power of the father on begetting, he may as well inherit the power obtained by the conjugal contract which was only personal, as he may the power obtained by begetting which could reach no father than the person of the begetter, unless begetting can be a title to power in him that does not beget. Which makes it a reasonable question to ask whether Adam, dying before Eve, his heir, suppose Cain or Seth, should have, by right of inheriting Adam's fatherhood, sovereign power over Eve, his mother. For Adam's fatherhood being nothing but a right he had to govern his children because he begot them, he that inherits Adam's fatherhood, inherits nothing even in our author's sense, but the right Adam had to govern his children because he begot them, so that the monarchy of the heir would not have taken in Eve, or if it did, being nothing but the fatherhood of Adam descended by inheritance, the heir must have right to govern Eve because Adam begot her, for fatherhood is nothing else. Perhaps it will be said with our author that a man can alien his power over his child, and what may be transferred by a compact may be possessed by inheritance. I answer, a father cannot alien the power he has over his child, he may perhaps to some degrees forfeit it, but cannot transfer it, and if any other man acquire it it is not by the father's grant but by some act of his own. For example, a father, unnaturally careless of his child, sells or gives him to another man, and he again exposes him, a third man finding him, breeds up, cherishes and provides for him as his own. I think in this case nobody will doubt but that the greatest part of filial duty and subjection was here owing and to be paid to this foster father, and if anything could be demanded from the child by either of the other, it could be only due to his natural father, who perhaps might have forfeit his right to much of that duty comprehended in the command, honour your parents, but could transfer none of it to another. He that purchased and neglected the child, got by his purchase and grant of the father, no title to duty or honour from the child, but only he acquired it who by his own authority, performing the office and care of a father to the forlorn and perishing infant, made himself, by paternal care, a title to proportionable degrees of paternal power. This will be more easily admitted upon consideration of the nature of paternal power, for which I refer my reader to the second book. To return to the argument in hand, this is evident that paternal power arising only from begetting, for in that our author places it alone, can neither be transferred nor inherited, and he that does not beget can no more have paternal power which arises from thence, than he can have a right to anything who performs not the condition to which only it is annexed. If one should ask by what law has a father power over his children, it will be answered no doubt by the law of nature which gives such a power over them to him that begets them. If one should ask likewise by what law does our author's heir come by a right to inherit, I think it would be answered by the law of nature too, for I find not that our author brings one word of scripture to prove the right of such an heir he speaks of. Why, then, the law of nature gives fathers paternal power over their children because they did beget them, and the same law of nature gives the same paternal power to the heir over his brethren who did not beget them. Whence it follows that either the father has not his paternal power by begetting, or else that the heir has it not at all, for it is hard to understand how the law of nature, which is the law of reason, can give the paternal power to the father over his children for the only reason of begetting, and to the first born over his brethren without this only reason, i.e. for no reason at all. And if the eldest by the law of nature can inherit this paternal power without the only reason that gives a title to it, so may the youngest as well as he, and a stranger as well as either. For where there is no reason for any one, as there is not but for him that begets, all have an equal title. I am sure our author offers no reason, and when any body does, we shall see whether it hold or know. In the meantime it is as good sense to say that by law of nature a man has right to inherit the property of another because he is of kin to him and is known to be of his blood, and therefore by the same law of nature an utter stranger to his blood has right to inherit his estate, as to say that by the law of nature he that begets them has paternal power over his children, and therefore by the law of nature the heir that begets them not has this paternal power over them. Or supposing the law of the land gave absolute power over their children to such only who nursed them and fed their children themselves, could any body pretend that this law gave anyone who did no such thing absolute power over those who were not his children. When therefore it can be showed that conjugal power can belong to him that is not an husband, it will also, I believe, be proved that our author's paternal power acquired by begetting may be inherited by a son, and that a brother as heir to his father's power may have paternal power over his brethren, and by the same rule conjugal power too. But till then I think we may rest satisfied that the paternal power of Adam, this sovereign authority of fatherhood, were there any such, could not descend to nor be inherited by his next heir. Fatherly power I easily grant our author, if it will do him any good, can never be lost because it will be as long in the world as there are furthers, but none of them will have Adam's paternal power or derive theirs from him. But every one will have his own, by the same title Adam had his, vis by begetting. But not by inheritance or succession, no more than husbands have their conjugal power by inheritance from Adam. And thus we see as Adam had no such property, no such paternal power, as gave him sovereign jurisdiction over mankind, so likewise his sovereignty built upon either of these titles, if he had any such, could not have descended to his heir, but must have ended with him. Adam, therefore, as has been proved, being neither monarch, nor his imaginary monarchy hereditable, the power which is now in the world, is not that which was Adam's, since all that Adam could have upon our author's grounds, either of property or fatherhood, necessarily died with him, and could not be conveyed to posterity by inheritance. In the next place we will consider whether Adam had any such heir to inherit his power, as our author talks of. End of Chapter 9 Book 1, Chapter 10 of Two Treatises of Civil Government This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa. Two Treatises of Civil Government by John Locke. Book 1, Chapter 10 Of the Heir to Adam's Monarchical Power Our author tells us, Observations 253, that it is a truth undeniable, that there cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, either great or small, though gathered together from the several corners and remotest regions of the world, but that in the same multitude considered by itself, there is one man amongst them, that in nature had the right to be king of all the rest, as being the next heir to Adam, and all the other subjects to him. Every man by nature is a king or a subject. And again, Page 20, if Adam himself was still living and now ready to die, it is certain that there is one man and but one in the world who is next heir. Let this multitude of men be, if our author pleases, all the princes upon the earth. There will then be, by our author's rule, one amongst them that in nature had the right to be king of all the rest, as being the right heir to Adam. An excellent way to establish the thrones of princes and settle the obedience of their subjects, by setting up a hundred, or perhaps a thousand, titles, if there be so many princes in the world, against any king now reigning, each as good upon our author's grounds, as his who wears the crown. If this right of heir carry any weight with it, if it be the ordinance of God, as our author seems to tell us, Observations 244, must not all be subject to it, from the highest to the lowest? Can those who wear the names of princes, without having the right of being heirs to Adam, demand obedience from their subjects by this title, and not be bound to pay it by the same law? Either governments in the world are not to be claimed and held by this title of Adam's heir, and then the starting of it is to no purpose. The being or not being Adam's heir signifies nothing as to the title of dominion. Or, if it really be, as our author says, the true title to government and sovereignty, the first thing to be done is to find out this true heir of Adam, seat him in his throne, and then all the kings and princes of the world ought to come and resign up their crowns and sceptres to him, as things that belong no more to them than to any of their subjects. For either this right in nature of Adam's heir, to be king over all the race of men, for altogether they make one multitude, is a right not necessary to the making of a lawful king, and so there may be lawful kings without it, and then kings' titles and power depend not on it, or else all the kings in the world but one are not lawful kings, and so have no right to obedience. Either this title of heir to Adam is that whereby kings hold their crowns and have a right to subjection from their subjects, and then one only can have it, and the rest being subjects can require no obedience from other men who are but their fellow subjects, or else it is not the title whereby kings rule, and have a right to obedience from their subjects, and then kings are kings without it, and this dream of the natural sovereignty of Adam's heir is of no use to obedience and government. For if kings have a right to dominion, and the obedience of their subjects, who are not nor can possibly be heirs to Adam, what use is there of such a title when we are obliged to obey without it? If kings who are not heirs to Adam have no right to sovereignty, we are all free till our author or anybody for him will show us Adam's right heir. If there be but one heir of Adam, there can be but one lawful king in the world, and nobody in conscience can be obliged to obedience till it be resolved who that is, for it may be anyone who is not known to be of a younger house, and all others have equal titles. If there be more than one heir of Adam, everyone is his heir, and so everyone has regal power, for if two sons can be heirs together then all the sons are equally heirs, and so all are heirs being all sons or sons sons of Adam. Betwixt these two the right of heir cannot stand, for by it either but one only man or all men are kings. Take which you please, it dissolves the bonds of government and obedience, since if all men are heirs they can owe obedience to nobody, if only one nobody can be obliged to pay obedience to him till he be known and his title made out. End of chapter 10