Words: 891
Locke starts the chapter by saying that weather we consider natural reason or revelation it is clear that earth belongs to mankind in common. Locke does not content himself to answer that if it be difficult to make out property upon a revelation ( a supposition that God gave the world to Adam and his posterity in common) but he rather will show 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.
Locke states that because the earth is given to mankind it has the reason and right to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that there is in is given to men for their use to support their existing. So all the fruits earth naturally produces and all the beast that it feeds belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the nature itself without aunt effort put in by men. As long as the goods given by earth are in this natural state no body has a private domino in any of them.
Still being given for the use of men there must be a means to appropriate them some way or other. Though all the creatures of the earth are common to men, heat every men has a property in his own person. Also the labor that he makes is his own. So the labor that man puts in common goods makes them after this his property at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others. So that labor puts a distinction between private and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right.
Further this law of nature that by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. Man can own and make property as much of witch he can make use of: whatever is beyond this is more than his share and belongs to others. But as the chief matter of property is the earth itself instead of the fruits of the earth and the beasts that subsist on it: The property in land is acquired as the former. As much land as a man can till, plant and cultivate, and can use the product of, so much is his property.
He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common. Although god gave the world to men in common it can not be supposed that it should always remain common. As it is told when man put labor in something he encloses it from common. And as the measure of property is in measurable in labor that man has put on it and in the amount that he can enjoy, use and benefit it is expected that man could not enjoy of such large part that it could entrench upon the right of another or acquire to himself a property to be prejudice his neighboring.
It is certain that in the beginning, before the desire of having more than man needed had altered Property by John Locke By monomaniac the intrinsic value tot things or gold was still not “discovered” every man and a right to appropriate , by their labor, each on of himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use it could not be that much to be harm for the other man.
Locke also adds that when man appropriates land to himself by his labor he does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind. One acre of enclosed and calculative land produces much more servings that support life than ten acre of common land that is lying. As the idea is that man can have property as much as he puts labor on it and can use and benefit from it, it is so that everything that went over his need was not his but common.
It means also that if he give away fruits of his land he uses them and so do not waste the common stock. Again if he gave those fruits for peace of medal and kept that metal all his life with him he invalided not the the right of others. He could heap up as much of there durable things as he pleased. And thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual onset men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable support of life.
Since gold and silver , being little useful to the life of man, it is plain that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more Lana that he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overpass gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one: these are not spoiling or decaying in the hand so the possessor.