Chapter 7
Of Political or Civil Society
§. 77. GOD, having made man such a creature that, in His own judgment, it was
not good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of necessity,
convenience, and inclination, to drive him into society, as well as fitted him
with understanding and language to continue and enjoy it. The first society was
between man and wife, which gave beginning to that between parents and
children, to which, in time, that between master and servant came to be added.
And though all these might, and commonly did, meet together, and make up but
one family, wherein the master or mistress of it had some sort of rule proper
to a family, each of these, or all together, came short of "political
society," as we shall see if we consider the different ends, ties, and
bounds of each of these.
§. 78. Conjugal society is made by a voluntary compact between man and woman,
and though it consist chiefly in such a communion and right in one another's
bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation, yet it draws with it
mutual support and assistance, and a communion of interests too, as necessary
not only to unite their care and affection, but also necessary to their common
offspring, who have a right to be nourished and maintained by them till they
are able to provide for themselves.
§. 79. For the end of conjunction between male and female being not barely
procreation, but the continuation of the species, this conjunction betwixt male
and female ought to last, even after procreation, so long as is necessary to
the nourishment and support of the young ones, who are to be sustained by those
that got them till they are able to shift and provide for themselves. This
rule, which the infinite wise Maker hath set to the works of His hands, we find
the inferior creatures steadily obey. In those vivaporous animals which feed on
grass the conjunction between male and female lasts no longer than the very act
of copulation, because the teat of the dam being sufficient to nourish the
young till it be able to feed on grass. the male only begets, but concerns not
himself for the female or young, to whose sustenance he can contribute nothing.
But in beasts of prey the conjunction lasts longer because the dam, not being
able well to subsist herself and nourish her numerous offspring by her own prey
alone (a more laborious as well as more dangerous way of living than by feeding
on grass), the assistance of the male is necessary to the maintenance of their
common family, which cannot subsist till they are able to prey for themselves,
but by the joint care of male and female. The same is observed in all birds
(except some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock from feeding
and taking care of the young brood), whose young, needing food in the nest, the
cock and hen continue mates till the young are able to use their wings and
provide for themselves.
§. 80. And herein, I think, lies the chief, if not the only reason, why the
male and female in mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than other
creatures — viz., because the female is capable of conceiving, and, de
facto, is commonly with child again, and brings forth too a new birth, long
before the former is out of a dependency for support on his parents' help and
able to shift for himself and has all the assistance due to him from his
parents, whereby the father, who is bound to take care for those he hath begot,
is under an obligation to continue in conjugal society with the same woman
longer than other creatures, whose young, being able to subsist of themselves
before the time of procreation returns again, the conjugal bond dissolves of
itself, and they are at liberty till Hymen, at his usual anniversary season,
summons them again to choose new mates. Wherein one cannot but admire the
wisdom of the great Creator, who, having given to man an ability to lay up for
the future as well as supply the present necessity, hath made it necessary that
society of man and wife should be more lasting than of male and female amongst
other creatures, that so their industry might be encouraged, and their interest
better united, to make provision and lay up goods for their common issue, which
uncertain mixture, or easy and frequent solutions of conjugal society, would
mightily disturb.
§. 81. But though these are ties upon mankind which make the conjugal bonds
more firm and lasting in a man than the other species of animals, yet it would
give one reason to inquire why this compact, where procreation and education
are secured and inheritance taken care for, may not be made determinable,
either by consent, or at a certain time, or upon certain conditions, as well as
any other voluntary compacts, there being no necessity, in the nature of the
thing, nor to the ends of it, that it should always be for life — I mean,
to such as are under no restraint of any positive law which ordains all such
contracts to be perpetual.
§. 82. But the husband and wife, though they have but one common concern, yet
having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes have different
wills too. It therefore being necessary that the last determination (i.e., the
rule) should be placed somewhere, it naturally falls to the man's share as the
abler and the stronger. But this, reaching but to the things of their common
interest and property, leaves the wife in the full and true possession of what
by contract is her peculiar right, and at least gives the husband no more power
over her than she has over his life; the power of the husband being so far from
that of an absolute monarch that the wife has, in many cases, a liberty to
separate from him where natural right or their contract allows it, whether that
contract be made by themselves in the state of Nature or by the customs or laws
of the country they live in, and the children, upon such separation, fall to
the father or mother's lot as such contract does determine.
§. 83. For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under politic
government, as well as in the state of Nature, the civil magistrate doth not
abridge the right or power of either, naturally necessary to those ends —
viz., procreation and mutual support and assistance whilst they are together,
but only decides any controversy that may arise between man and wife about
them. If it were otherwise, and that absolute sovereignty and power of life and
death naturally belonged to the husband, and were necessary to the society
between man and wife, there could be no matrimony in any of these countries
where the husband is allowed no such absolute authority. But the ends of
matrimony requiring no such power in the husband, it was not at all necessary
to it. The condition of conjugal society put it not in him; but whatsoever
might consist with procreation and support of the children till they could
shift for themselves — mutual assistance, comfort, and maintenance —
might be varied and regulated by that contract which first united them in that
society, nothing being necessary to any society that is not necessary to the
ends for which it is made.
§. 84. The society betwixt parents and children, and the distinct rights and
powers belonging respectively to them, I have treated of so largely in the
foregoing chapter that I shall not here need to say anything of it; and I think
it is plain that it is far different from a politic society.
§. 85. Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to those of
far different condition; for a free man makes himself a servant to another by
selling him for a certain time the service he undertakes to do in exchange for
wages he is to receive; and though this commonly puts him into the family of
his master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof, yet it gives the master
but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the
contract between them. But there is another sort of servant which by a peculiar
name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war are, by the right
of Nature, subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their
masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives and, with it, their
liberties, and lost their estates, and being in the state of slavery, not
capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of
civil society, the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.
§. 86. Let us therefore consider a master of a family with all these
subordinate relations of wife, children, servants and slaves, united under the
domestic rule of a family, with what resemblance soever it may have in its
order, offices, and number too, with a little commonwealth, yet is very far
from it both in its constitution, power, and end; or if it must be thought a
monarchy, and the paterfamilias the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy
will have but a very shattered and short power, when it is plain by what has
been said before, that the master of the family has a very distinct and
differently limited power both as to time and extent over those several persons
that are in it; for excepting the slave (and the family is as much a family,
and his power as paterfamilias as great, whether there be any slaves in his
family or no) he has no legislative power of life and death over any of them,
and none too but what a mistress of a family may have as well as he. And he
certainly can have no absolute power over the whole family who has but a very
limited one over every individual in it. But how a family, or any other society
of men, differ from that which is properly political society, we shall best see
by considering wherein political society itself consists.
§. 87. Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom and
an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of
Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by
nature a power not only to preserve his property — that is, his life,
liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to
judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the
offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of
the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be,
nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and
in order thereunto punish the offences of all those of that society, there, and
there only, is political society where every one of the members hath quitted
this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases
that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by
it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded,
the community comes to be umpire, and by understanding indifferent rules and
men authorised by the community for their execution, decides all the
differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any
matter of right, and punishes those offences which any member hath committed
against the society with such penalties as the law has established; whereby it
is easy to discern who are, and are not, in political society together. Those
who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature
to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them and punish
offenders, are in civil society one with another; but those who have no such
common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of Nature, each being
where there is no other, judge for himself and executioner; which is, as I have
before showed it, the perfect state of Nature.
§. 88. And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down what punishment
shall belong to the several transgressions they think worthy of it, committed
amongst the members of that society (which is the power of making laws), as
well as it has the power to punish any injury done unto any of its members by
any one that is not of it (which is the power of war and peace); and all this
for the preservation of the property of all the members of that society, as far
as is possible. But though every man entered into society has quitted his power
to punish offences against the law of Nature in prosecution of his own private
judgment, yet with the judgment of offences which he has given up to the
legislative, in all cases where he can appeal to the magistrate, he has given
up a right to the commonwealth to employ his force for the execution of the
judgments of the commonwealth whenever he shall be called to it, which, indeed,
are his own judgements, they being made by himself or his representative. And
herein we have the original of the legislative and executive power of civil
society, which is to judge by standing laws how far offences are to be punished
when committed within the commonwealth; and also by occasional judgments
founded on the present circumstances of the fact, how far injuries from without
are to be vindicated, and in both these to employ all the force of all the
members when there shall be need.
§. 89. Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society as to
quit every one his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to
the public, there and there only is a political or civil society. And this is
done wherever any number of men, in the state of Nature, enter into society to
make one people one body politic under one supreme government: or else when any
one joins himself to, and incorporates with any government already made. For
hereby he authorises the society, or which is all one, the legislative thereof,
to make laws for him as the public good of the society shall require, to the
execution whereof his own assistance (as to his own decrees) is due. And this
puts men out of a state of Nature into that of a commonwealth, by setting up a
judge on earth with authority to determine all the controversies and redress
the injuries that may happen to any member of the commonwealth, which judge is
the legislative or magistrates appointed by it. And wherever there are any
number of men, however associated, that have no such decisive power to appeal
to, there they are still in the state of Nature.
§. 90. And hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men is
counted for the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil
society, and so can be not form of civil government at all. For the end of
civil society being to avoid and remedy those inconveniences of the state of
Nature which necessarily follow from every man's being judge in his own case,
by setting up a known authority to which every one of that society may appeal
upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of
the society ought to obey.[1] Wherever any
persons are who have not such an authority to appeal to, and decide any
difference between them there, those persons are still in the state of Nature.
And so is every absolute prince in respect of those who are under his dominion.
§. 91. For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and executive,
power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to
any one, who may fairly and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from
whence relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconveniency that
may be suffered from him, or by his order. So that such a man, however
entitled, Czar, or Grand Signior, or how you please, is as much in the state of
Nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind. For
wherever any two men are, who have no standing rule and common judge to appeal
to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them,
there they are still in the state of Nature, and under all the inconveniencies
of it, with only this woeful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an
absolute prince.[2] That whereas, in the
ordinary state of Nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, according to
the best of his power to maintain it; but whenever his property is invaded by
the will and order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in
society ought to have, but, as if he were degraded from the common state of
rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or defend his right, and
so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies that a man can fear from
one, who being in the unrestrained state of Nature, is yet corrupted with
flattery and armed with power.
§. 92. For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects
the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other
age, to be convinced to the contrary. He that would have been insolent and
injurious in the woods of America would not probably be much better on a
throne, where perhaps learning and religion shall be found out to justify all
that he shall do to his subjects, and the sword presently silence all those
that dare question it. For what the protection of absolute monarchy is, what
kind of fathers of their countries it makes princes to be, and to what a degree
of happiness and security it carries civil society, where this sort of
government is grown to perfection, he that will look into the late relation of
Ceylon may easily see.
§. 93. In absolute monarchies, indeed, as well as other governments of the
world, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to decide any
controversies, and restrain any violence that may happen betwixt the subjects
themselves, one amongst another. This every one thinks necessary, and believes;
he deserves to be thought a declared enemy to society and mankind who should go
about to take it away. But whether this be from a true love of mankind and
society, and such a charity as we owe all one to another, there is reason to
doubt. For this is no more than what every man, who loves his own power,
profit, or greatness, may, and naturally must do, keep those animals from
hurting or destroying one another who labour and drudge only for his pleasure
and advantage; and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has for
them, but love of himself, and the profit they bring him. For if it be asked
what security, what fence is there in such a state against the violence and
oppression of this absolute ruler, the very question can scarce be borne. They
are ready to tell you that it deserves death only to ask after safety. Betwixt
subject and subject, they will grant, there must be measures, laws, and judges
for their mutual peace and security. But as for the ruler, he ought to be
absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has a power to do
more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded
from or injury on that side, where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently
the voice of faction and rebellion. As if when men, quitting the state of
Nature, entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be
under the restraint of laws; but that he should still retain all the liberty of
the state of Nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity.
This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what
mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it
safety, to be devoured by lions.
§. 94. But, whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people's understandings, it
never hinders men from feeling; and when they perceive that any man, in what
station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil society they are of, and that
they have no appeal, on earth, against any harm they may receive from him, they
are apt to think themselves in the state of Nature, in respect of him whom they
find to be so; and to take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety and
security, in civil society, for which it was first instituted, and for which
only they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps at first, as shall be
showed more at large hereafter, in the following part of this discourse, some
one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency amongst the rest, had this
deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as to a kind of natural authority,
that the chief rule, with arbitration of their differences, by a tacit consent
devolved into his hands, without any other caution but the assurance they had
of his uprightness and wisdom; yet when time giving authority, and, as some men
would persuade us, sacredness to customs, which the negligent and unforeseeing
innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another stamp,
the people finding their properties not secure under the government as then it
was[3] (whereas government has no other end
but the preservation of property), could never be safe, nor at rest, nor think
themselves in civil society, till the legislative was so placed in collective
bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please, by which means
every single person became subject equally with other the meanest men, to those
laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established; nor could
any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law, when once made, nor
by any pretence of superiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or
the miscarriages of any of his dependants. No man in civil society can be
exempted from the laws of it. For if any man may do what he thinks fit and
there be no appeal on earth for redress or security against any harm he shall
do, I ask whether he be not perfectly still in the state of Nature, and so can
be no part or member of that civil society, unless any one will say the state
of Nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet
found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm.[4]
Footnotes
[1]
. "The public power of all society is above every
soul contained in the same society, and the principal use of that power is to
give laws unto all that are under it, which laws in such cases we must obey,
unless there be reason showed which may necessarily enforce that the law of
reason or of God doth enjoin the contrary." Hooker, Eccl. Pol., i. 16.
[2]
. "To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries,
and wrongs — i.e., such as attend men in the state of Nature, there was no
way but only by growing into composition and agreement amongst themselves by
ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject
thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them
the peace, tranquillity, and happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men
always knew that where force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of
themselves. They knew that, however men may seek their own commodity, yet if
this were done with injury unto others, it was not to be suffered, but by all
men and all good means to be withstood. Finally, they knew that no man might,
in reason, take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own
determination proceed in maintenance thereof, in as much as every man is
towards himself, and them whom he greatly affects, partial; and therefore, that
strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent,
all to be ordered by some whom they should agree upon, without which consent
there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge
over another." Hooker, ibid. 10.
[3]
. "At the first, when some certain kind of regimen
was once appointed, it may be that nothing was then further thought upon for
the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and discretion
which were to rule till, by experience, they found this for all parts very
inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy did indeed
but increase the sore which it should have cured. They saw that to live by one
man's will became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to come
unto laws wherein all men might see their duty beforehand, and know the
penalties of transgressing them." Hooker, Eccl. Pol. i. 10.
[4]
. "Civil law, being the act of the whole body
politic, doth therefore overrule each several part of the same body."
Hooker, ibid.