§. 4. To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original,
we must consider what estate 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.
