succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity. But I
shall endeavour to shew, how men might come to have a property in
several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that
without any express compact of all the commoners.

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