mer of Hobbes, "about the Rights of _exercising_
Government, but I cannot agree to his means of acquiring it." That power
must be absolute, Filmer, like Hobbes, has no manner of doubt; but his
method of proof is to derive the title of Charles I from Adam. Little
difficulties like the origin of primogeniture, or whence, as Locke
points out, the universal monarchy of Shem can be derived, the good Sir
Robert does not satisfactorily determine. Locke takes him up point by
point, and there is little enough left, save a sense that history is the
root of institutions, when he has done. What troubles us is rather why
Locke should have wasted the resources of his intelligence upon so
feeble an opponent. The book of Hobbes lay ready to his hand; yet he
almost ostentatiously refused to grapple with it. The answer doubtless
lies in Hobbes' unsavory fame. The man who made the Church a mere
department of the State and justified not less the title of Cromwell
than of the Stuarts was not the opponent for one who had a very
practical problem in hand. And Locke could answer that he was answering
Hobbes implicitly in the second _Treatise_. And though Filmer might
never have been known had not Locke thus honored him by retort, he
doubtless symbolized what many a nobleman's chaplain preached to his
master's dependents at family prayers.

The _Second Treatise_ goes to the root of the matter. Why does political
power, "a Right of making Laws and Penalties of Death and consequently
all less Penalties," exist? It can only be for the public benefit, and
our enquiry is thus a study of the grounds of political obedience. Locke
thus traverses the ground Hobbes had covered in his _Leviathan_ though
he rejects every premise of the earlier thinker. To Hobbes the state of
nature which precedes political organization had been a state of war.
Neither peace nor reason could prevail where every man was his
neighbor's enemy; and the establishment of absolute power, with the
consequent surrender by men of all their natural liberties, was the only
means of escape from so brutal a regime. That the state of nature was so
distinguished Locke at the outset denies. The state of nature is
governed by the law of nature. The law of nature is not, as Hobbes had
made it, the antithesis of real law, but rather its condition
antecedent. It is a body of rules which governs, at all times and all
places, the conduct of men. Its arbiter is reason and, in the natural
state, re