Read this excerpt from Two Treatises on Government. Which portion of the text demonstrates that John Locke
opposed absolute governments?
To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men
are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their
possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave,
or depending upon the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than
another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank,
promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also
be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them
all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an
evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.....
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that
law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to
harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one
omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by
his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last
during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one
community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize
us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures
are for our's. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the
like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to
preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair
the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.