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    John Locke's Use of Classical Legal TheoryAuthor(s): Roger T. SimondsSource: International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Spring, 1997), pp. 424-432Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30222299 .

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    J o h n Locke ' s U s e o fClass ical L e g a l T h e o r yROGERT. SIMONDSJohn Locke's chapteron property in the SecondTreatiseof Governmentnderminesthefeudal theory of tenure and liegnancy prevailing in English law and restoresclassicalallodial naturalpropertyrightsto all individuals.Then, in order to explainthe transfor-mation of common propertyinto private property,Lockeproposes his "labortheory"ofappropriation:whatever commonpropertyI "mix"my labor with becomes privateprop-erty. This is a ratherstrainedadaptationof the classicallegal theoryof the ownershipofmixtures and merged entities, which can be found in Justinian'sInstitutesand Digest.Although Locke's earlier writings show no familiaritywith legal literatureexcept forGrotiusand Pufendorf,at the end of his life he consciouslyappliedclassicaltheorywhileavoiding the appearanceof doingso by adapting t to the Protestantconceptof laboras anintrinsicallyvaluable activity and transforming hat activity into a quasi-materialentitycapableof combinationwith other materialentities.

    John Locke's most importantcontribution to politicalphilosophy is his justificationof limited parliamentary government based on the need to protect property rightsor, as we prefer to say now, civil rights or human rights. In providing an explanationof the origin of private property, he reproduces the effect of the classical Roman theoryof property, although he does not use the classical terminology, for reasons which Iwill discuss. He does give ample hints as to his reliance on parts of the classical theory.Locke's argument about property rights appears in the famous fifth chapter of thesecond book of his Two Treatisesof Government.There he claims that although Godgave the earth and all its contents to men in common, every man may appropriate andthus convert into his own private property whatever he needs for his survival, orwithin limits, whatever he wants for his enjoyment. The crux of the argument is the

    particular device by which Locke proposes to explain this conversion of commonproperty into private property. An object of common property becomes mine, he says(2.27),' when I "mix" or "join" my labor with it.This astonishing metaphor, which treats labor as a space-occupying material ob-ject to be combined with other such objects, has excited a lot of comment but nosatisfactory explanation,2 so far as I am aware. That labor should be dignified and

    1. Referencesto the Two Treatisesn this paper are parenthetical,beginningwith the numberof the treatise(1 or 2) and followed by the paragraphnumber.Parenthetical eferencestoother works areby page number.2. An early example is David Hume: "Somephilosophersaccountfor the rightof occupation,saying, that every one has a propertyin his own labour;and when he joins that labour toThe last institutionalaffiliationof the late RogerT. Simonds (1929-1995)was with the Depart-ment of Philosophyand ReligionatThe AmericanUniversity,Washington,DC,USA.

    Internationalournal ftheClassicalTradition,Vol.3, No.4, Spring1997,pp.424-432.

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    Simonds 425

    valuable for Locke is no mystery, given his early Puritanupbringing and politicalsympathies.3Thatmy laborbelongs to me, assuming that we rule out slavery, is notcontroversial,although the exact sense in which we can regardit as property needsdefinition. But that laborshouldbe treated as a materialobjectseems hardly plausible.If indeed it is property,it does not follow that it must be materialproperty.We havevariouskinds of immaterialproperty,such as copyrights, rademarks,and patents.Lockeassumes also that the productsof my laborbelong to me, and in an earlierpassagehe gives it a theologicalapplication:

    For men being all the Workmanshipof one Omnipotent,and infinitelywiseMaker;All the servantsof one SovereignMaster,sent into the Worldby hisorder and about his business, they are his Property,whose Workmanshipthey are,made to lastduringhis, not one anothersPleasure.(2.6)Thus,God himself is a laborer, n creatingthe world, and his dominion over the worldis justified by that fact. The world, including mankind, is God's work-product.Theway in which Locke later applies this labor theory to human property is somewhatsimilarbut differsat two importantpoints. First,the human "person" s said to be theproperty of the man, although the man is the propertyof God. Secondly, the thingswhich are to become my private property are not only those things which I havecreated, f any,but those thingswith which I have mixedorjoined my labor.First,as to the humanperson:

    Though the Earth,and all inferiorCreaturesbe common to all Men, yetevery man has a Propertyn his own Person.Thisno Body has any Righttobut himself. (2.27)Here it is quite clear thatby "person"Locke means "body,"which is still one of thecommon uses of the word "person";but by "body,"in this particularcontext, hemeans the same thing as "man"or "self."It is the "man" hat owns the "person,"andthat man is "himself"and no other"body."To avoid confusion,we have to remember hatLocke s a psycho-physicaldualist:he regardsthe living human being as an interactive combinationof body and mind,4and it is this interactivecombination,or couple, thatis God'swork-productand prop-erty. Yet that factdoes not preventthe man fromhaving propertyof his own, and hisfirst item of property,on which allelse depends, is his materialbody itself.My body ismy own private property,as long as I live, being the gift of God. It is also inalienable,however, since if I were to dispose of it I would be violatingthe divine property rightin the psycho-physicalcouple that is myself.Notice that it would not be enough to saythat I have only some sort of feudal tenure or temporaryuse in my body, for in that

    any thing, t gives himthe property f thewhole;But... Wecannotbe said to joinourlabour nanythingbut n afigurativeense.Properlypeaking,weonlymakeanalterationon itbyour abour"505,note).3. Thenoveltyof Locke's ttitude oward abors notedbyPolin 262),whoalsocomparestwith theviewsofHobbes,Grotius, ufendorf,etty,andHarrington.4. Lockegivesan extensivediscussion f thispositionn theEssay, ook2, chapter 3,espe-ciallyparagraphs5to36.

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    426 InternationalournalftheClassical radition/Spring1997

    case the whole argumentto establishprivate property rightsover otherobjectsbreaksdown. I must own my body in order to own my labor, and I must own my labor inorder to own anythingelse.s5As Lockeputs it elsewhere, "Man[is] Masterof himself,and Proprietorfhis ownPerson, nd the actionsor Labour f it"(2.44).Secondly,as to the conversionof commonproperty nto privateproperty:

    The Labourof his Body, and the Worksof his Hands, we may say, areproperlyhis. Whatsoeverthen he removes out of the State thatNature hathprovided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labourwith, and joyned to itsomething that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property.... For thisLabour eing the unquestionablePropertyof the Labourer,no Man but hecan have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there isenough, and as good left in commonfor others.(2.27)In the state of nature--for example, in the hypothetical absence of civil or politicalsociety--all the contentsof the world (exceptfor individuallive humanbodies) are thecommonpropertyof everyone.But Locke s careful to say that the stateof natureis nota mythical pre-political state of affairs. It is rather that legal relationshipbetweenindividuals which is independent of whatever political conventions or organizationmay govern them. Thus, as he points out, the rulers of differentgovernmentsare inthe state of nature relative to each other;and tradersfrom different countries mayenter into binding contractualagreementswhile remainingin the state of nature rela-tive to each other (2.14).Although Lockedoes not say so, it seems to follow that evenindividuals belonging to the same political society may be in the state of naturerela-tive to eachotherwith respectto those entitiesand relations not regulated by the lawsof that society. For example, legislation does not ordinarilydeterminewhat specificportionsof aircitizensshall breatheor what specificportionsof waterthey shall drink.These materials remain common property until they are appropriatedby breathersand drinkers.The act of appropriationtself is what Locke callsmixing orjoininglaborwith theobject.Butobviously, as many of Locke's criticshave complained,startingwith DavidHume, laboris not literallythe sort of thing that canbe mixed orjoinedwith anything.If we think of laboras mechanicalexertion,or force, we can say that it is applied tosome objectat a particular ime andplace.In thatcase,according o classicalNewtonianmechanics, the objectitself exerts an equal and opposite force on the laborer,yet wewould hardly grantthat the objecttherebyexertslabor.Thereasonis that labor is notmerely an applicationof force;it requires an act of will or intention, an element ofsubjectivity.All the moredoubt, therefore, hat we canspeakof mixing orjoiningsucha thing with inert materials ike air and water.Moreover,we do not actuallymeasurelaborin terms of the quantityof physical forceexerted but rather n termsof the timerequiredto completea task.Now, if Locke had wanted to make explicit use of classical legal doctrine, hecould have found a much simplersolution to his problemin the Institutes nd Digestof

    5. JamesTully hinks hatmy labor, ut not my person,s my property105 f.).But hereareseveralexplicitstatementsto the contrary.Forexample:"ByProperty must be understoodhere, as in otherplaces,to mean that Propertywhich Men have in theirPersons as well asGoods"(2.173).

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    Simonds 427

    Justinian.Accordingto classicaltheory,thatwhich is no one's property(resnullius), nsome cases, and that which is everyone's common property (rescommunis mnium),becomes my private property when I take possession of it. This is called "naturalpossession," and accordingto Nerva the younger, as reported by Paul in the Digest(D.41,2,1), t is the originof all ownership.As examples,he mentions "thingscapturedon land, in the sea and in the sky."6Why did Locke not avail himself of this classical theory?We know that he hadcontemporaryeditions of Romanlaw texts in his libraryat the time of his death.7Hedid not have standardEnglish legal texts, such as Plowden or Coke or Fitzherbert,though he did have the small legal dictionariesof Cowell and Rastell.He does notavail himself of native English or law-Frenchterminology.He was well acquaintedwith the writings of Grotiusand Pufendorf,but both of them diverge from classicaltheoryon the topic of naturalpossession.There is no doubt that he was familiar with the word "possession,"since he usesit many times in the laterpartsof the second Treatise,ncluding partsof the chapteronproperty.Yet it remains unclear thathe is using that termin its classicalsense, that isthe occupancyordefactocontrolover somethingas opposed to the proprietaryrightofownership.Sometimeshe combinesthose two meanings,that is possession defactoandrightful occupancyor possession dejure.Referring o the naturallimitationsor "mea-sures" on the acquisitionof things, which demand that we acquireonly what we canuse without waste or spoilage,he says, "The same measuresgoverned the PossessionofLand oo"(2.38).The OxfordEnglish Dictionarycites thispassageas an exampleof theclassicaluse of the word "possession,"but I think not. In the very next sentence weread:

    But if either the Grassof his Inclosurerotted on the Ground,or the Fruit ofhis planting perished without gathering, and laying up, this part of theEarth,notwithstanding his Inclosure,was still to be looked on as Waste,and mightbe the Possessionof any other.(2.38)Here the word "possession"obviously carries the sense of legitimate ownership, orpossession de jure,not the classical sense. The same remarkapplies to many of theotherappearancesof thatword in the Treatise, lthoughthereare a few instancesto thecontrary.Thus Lockedescribes "theHare that any one is hunting"as "a Beast that isstill looked upon as common, and no Man'sprivatePossession"(2.30).Here "posses-sion" means property. Yet he also says that the invention of money, "and the tacitAgreement of Men to put a value on it, introduced (by Consent) largerPossessions,and a Right to them" (2.36).Here "possession"is de acto.So we must conclude thatLocke's use of this termis woefully inconsistent.

    The reason for this inconsistency,I suggest, is that it reflects the fact that Englishlegal theory and custom in Locke's time did not clearly distinguish possession fromownership in the classical manner. After the Norman conquest of 1066,all privateallodial property (that is, absoluteprivate ownership of land) in the realm was abol-

    6. Possessioppellatast,utetLabeoit,asedibusuasi ositio,uianaturalitereneturbeoquieiinsistit; uamGraeciacazoXyvicunt.Dominiumqueerumx naturaliossessioneoepisseervafiliusait eiusqueeivestigiumemaneren his,quae erramari aeloqueapiuntur;amhaecprotinusorumfiunt,uiprimi ossessionemorumdprehenderint.

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    428 InternationalJournalfthe ClassicalTradition/Spring 1997

    ished, and all land except for that of the church became the property of the crown.Henceforth there were no longer any private landed proprietors, only tenants of theking or of his vassals. The technicalterm for this kind of tenurewas "seisin,"a wordwhich combinedand conflated theconceptsof possessionand ownership.Inthe courseof time, various devices forreintroducing he classical distinctionevolved, but not theclassicalterminology.8It would have been politically incorrect for any EnglishProtestant writer of theseventeenth century to make overt use of Roman civil or canon law language, eventhough at the same time the Englishcourts were quietly taking over and translatinginto the vernacularmany of the essentials of Romanjurisprudence.9DenigrationofRomanand canonlaw, and of civilianpractitioners,was a major actic in the rhetoricalbattles between the partisans of Parliament and partisans of the Crown during theearly Stuartregimes. Romanlaw was thought to justify despotism.10After the Com-monwealth and Restoration,this particularissue disappears, since civilian learningand practice s no longer a crediblerival or threat to the supremacyof Parliamentandthe common law. WhatLockedoes in his political writingswas considereddangerousor even treasonousby royalists,because by arguingfor a revival of allodialpropertyrights he undermines the legal basis of the theory of absoluteroyalpowers and pre-rogatives. Of course, he is also proposing to limit the powers of Parliament for thesame reasons,which probablyaccountsfor the fact that his views never had the stronginfluencein Englandthatthey enjoyedin the Americancolonies.It is not surprising,then, that Lockedoes not avail himself explicitly of the mostobvious classicalsolution to the problemof justifyingthe conversionof commonprop-erty into private property. Yet by introducing the metaphor of mixing labor withmaterialthings he tacitly relies on the Romantraditionin a differentway, that is, onthe theory of the legal ownershipof mixtures. This theory was available to him in thesame sections of the Institutesand Digestthat containthe doctrine of naturalposses-sion.

    Accordingto classicaltheory,if two batches of the same kind of material,belong-ing to two different owners, are mixed together in such a way that they cannot beseparately identified, then the two original owners become joint owners of the mix-ture, and the materials can be parceled out to them in proportion to the relativevolumes or weights of the originalbatches(D.6,1,3,2)."So, if ten pounds of my grapesare mixed with twenty pounds of your grapes, and we have no way to tell whichgrapes belong to which batch, I can reclaimten pounds of the new mixture and youcan reclaimtwenty. The situationis different f the originalbatchesconsist of different

    7. He had Everard,Lociargumentorumegales 1604);Gothofredus,Manualeuris(1665);Corpusiuris ivilis1663);ustinian,nstitutiones1553 nd1647). eeHarrisonndLaslett.8. For helegaleffectsof Normaneudalism,eePlucknett,1-13and516ff.Also 580-82 orthe deviceof enfeoffment s a way of avoiding he financial urdensof the "feudalnci-dents"attachedo the doctrine f seisin.9. SeePlucknett, 97-300,or he nfluences f Romanaw on theEnglishegalsystem.10. Theclassicalextspresumehe existence f anall-powerfulmperor. orexample,D.1,3,31(Princepsegibusolutusst)seems osaythat he aws(orcertainaws)do notapply ohim;and D.1,4,1(Quodprincipiplacuit, egishabetvigoremn)ives him the power to make laws byhimself.11. Pomponiuscribit, i quidquodeiusdemnaturae st itaconfusumstatquecommixtum,t deducietseparari onpossint,nontotum, edproparte ssevindicandum....

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    Simonds 429

    kinds of materialswhich become fused, by chemical or metallurgicalaction, so thatthey canno longerbe separated,and the fusion has created a new entity differingfromboth of the original materials. Some jurists thought that this new entity would becommon property, but the prevailing opinion was that it would not. According toUlpian (D.6,1,5,1)12nd Gaius (D.41,1,7,7),13he maker of the fused entity is the legiti-mate owner, not the owner or owners of the originalmaterials.The argumentis thatthis new entity did not previously exist in the world, while the originalmaterials haveceased to exist. Thus, if I mix my honey with your wine and make mead, the honeyand the wine no longer exist as separateentities,and I amthe proprietorof the mead.Before I created it, the mead was res nullius,nobody's property.It did not exist inrerumnatura.By mixing something of mine with something of yours, I have madesomething new that belongs to me as its first occupant or naturalpossessor. It goeswithout saying that this fact does not relieve me of responsibilityto compensate youfor the use of your wine. Or suppose that I have a bronze statue which lacks an arm,and I attach to it a bronze arm belonging to you. If the attachment is by soldering(plumbatura),he arm remainsyour propertywhile the rest of the statue is mine. Thereason is that in this case the arm can easily be identified and detached withoutdisturbing the integrity of the original statue. But if the attachmentis by welding(ferruminatio),e canno longerdetermineexactlywhere the arm ends and the body ofthe statuebegins; the armhas become an integralpartof the whole, which belongs tome.14Lockeapparentlythoughthe could exploit this theoryfor his purposes, given hisbold use of the metaphor of mixing and joining. But he never tries to spell it out indetail, and it would be very hard to do so without falling into absurdity.In the firstplace, if mixing or joining my labor to your wine makes it my wine, without furtherado, then we have a perfectjustification or theft. A house paintercannot claim title toa house merely because he has worked on its walls. A poem written on someone'sparchmentbelongs to the owner of the parchment, n classicaltheory,not to the poet.'5Locke would have to assume that mixing labor with something, like mixing honeywith wine, creates a new entity to which only the laboreris entitled. That is hardlyplausible.If I make a statuewith your clay,your ownershiphas not vanished,becausethe originalmaterial s still there;I have only altered ts shape.And in many of Locke'sillustrations,there is no question of creating something or altering something. Forexample:12. Idem[Pomponius]cribit, i ex mellemeo,vino tuofactumsit mulsum,quosdam xistimassedquoque ommunicari:edputoverius,ut et ipsesignificat, iuspotius ssequi ecit, quoniamuamspeciem ristinam oncontinet.13. Cumquisex alienamateriaspeciem liquam uo nominefecerit,Nervaet Proculusputanthuncdominum ssequi fecerit, quia quod actumest, antea nulliusfuerat.Sabinuset Cassiusmagisnaturalem ationemefficereputant,ut qui materiae ominusfuerit, idemeius quoque,quodexeademmateriafactumsit, dominus sset,quia ine materia ullaspecies fficipossit ... est tamenmediasententiarecteexistimantium,i speciesad materiam evertipossit,veriusesse, quodetSabinus t Cassius enserunt,i nonpossitreverti, erius sse,quodNervae tProculo lacuit.14. D.6,1,23,5:dicit [Cassius]enim,si statuaesuaeferruminationeunctumbracchiumit, unitatemaiorispartisconsumiet quodsemelalienumfactumsit, etiamsi ndeabruptumit, redireadpriorem ominum onposse.nonidem n eoquodadplumbatumit, quiaerruminatioereandemmateriamfacitonfusionem,lumbaturaon demefficit.15. D.6,1,23,3: edet id,quodn chartamea cribitur utin tabulapingitur,tatimmeumfit: ... necesseesteireicedi,quod ine illa essenonpotest.

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    430 InternationalournalftheClassicalraditionSpring997

    He thatis nourishedby the Acorns he picktup under an Oak,or the Appleshe gatheredfrom the Trees n the Wood,has certainlyappropriated hem tohimself .... And 'tis plain, if the firstgatheringmade them not his, nothingelse could. (2.28)

    If these acorns and apples are not created orsignificantlyalteredby the mere fact ofbeing picked up or picked off, then the most that could be said to rescue the theoryforLocke's purposes would be that the labor of picking them has added something tothem which createsa new entity.And that is what Lockealmostsays:That Labourput a distinctionbetween them and common. That added some-thing to them more thanNature, the commonMother of all, had done; andso they became his privateright.(2.28)

    Buthe does not actuallysay that this additionof laborcreates a new entity.And so thelogical force of the addition remains unclear.A few sentences later, however, Lockeoffers a sort of explanation:That Labour hatwas mine, removing them out of that common state theywere in, hathfixedmy Propertyn them. (2.28)

    Now the additionor mixing of labor is explained as a change of state in the object, orexample, a change in its location. This is the closest Lockeever comes to an explana-tion for his claim thatmixing laborwith things transforms hem into privateproperty.It is of course a more realistic account of what actuallyhappens in the gatheringofacorns and apples. But it also implicitly abandonsthe classicaltheory of naturalpos-session. It is still not quite there,because I may cause a change of state in an objectwithout intendingto make use of it or claim it asproperty.A furtherproblem for Locke is to explain why mixing my labor with commonproperty makes it mine, while mixing my labor with someone else's private propertydoes not. This was a major sticking point in the writings of Sir RobertFilmer, theroyalist who is Locke'smain antagonist and the target of the first book of the TwoTreatises.Filmer,in his Patriarcha,ttributesto Grotiusthe doctrine,which he consid-ers repugnantto Holy Scripture, hatGod immediatelyafter the Creation,did bestow upon mankindin generalaright over things of inferiornature... From whence it came to pass thatpresently every man might snatch what he would for his own use, andspend what he could. (63)

    Elsewhere,in apamphletaboutGrotius,he explainshis objection o this theory:Certainlyit was as rarefelicity,that all the men in the world at one instantof time should agree togetherin one mind to changethe naturalcommunityof all things into privatedominion: for without such a unanimous consent itwas not possible for community to be altered:for if but one man in theworld had dissented, the alterationhad been unjust,because that man bythe law of nature had a right to the common use of all things in the world;

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    Simonds 431

    so that to have given a proprietyof any one thing to any other,had been tohave robbedhim of his rightto the commonuse of all things. (273)Hence Filmerrejectsthe notion of a naturalcommunity of all things and takes theposition that God conferredprivate property on certainindividuals, namely Adamand the succeeding Patriarchs.And from this he derives the divine right of kings.Filmer'sargumentassumes one kind of common property;Locke's assumes another.Filmer'shypotheticalnaturalcommunityis a type of partnership hat could exist onlyby special convention, in which every decision about the use of the property wouldhave to be by unanimous consent. Locke'snaturalcommunityis like joint ownershipat common law, or even ownership "bythe entirety,"where each participanthas therightto use any or all of thejoint propertywithoutneeding the consentof the others.16A simple example is the modem joint bank account.The co-owners do not requireeach other'spermissionto write checks on it.The remainingquestionis, which of these differentmodels of the stateof nature isbetter supported by argument? By instinct,we are most likely to rejectthe views ofFilmer and side with Locke. But the fact is that both Filmerand Locke fall back ontheological and scripturalexegesis at this crucialpoint. Are there any better reasons,from the standpointof modemrnhilosophy and jurisprudence? will end by suggest-ing that therearegood reasonsto preferLocke'sposition,once we have restated t in away thateliminates the uncertainties ntroducedby the religious language.When Lockesays thatwe are all the work-productof God's labor,we can trans-late that to mean that our existence in the world is a matter of brute fact for whichneither we ourselves nor anyone else can claim full credit. True our parents hadsomething to do with it, because theirreproductiveactivitywas a necessaryconditionfor our appearance;but it was not a sufficient condition. Thereis a state of nature forus, no matterhow civilized we are, because there are many aspects of our life andbehavior that are independent of cultural traditions and political controls. Like allanimals,we are governed to a greatextentby powerful instinctsthat tend to promoteour survival.A famous line from Ulpian in the first title of the Digestidentifies theseinstincts with the law of nature(ius naturale).'7Whatwe have to do in orderto survive,like breathing,drinking,and eating,we do by right.Lockeimplies (2.6) that we havean obligationto do these things,but it is not necessaryto go that far for his purposes.If we have a naturalright to act for our survival, we must also have a right toobtainand use those materialsneeded forsurvival. The actof obtainingthem is the actof takingpossession in the classical sense. A rightto takepossession is an entitlement.And since this act of possession is for materials to which we and everyone else arealready jointlyentitled, it bars otherindividuals from taking possession of the samethings. Otherwise, they could bring about our demise. Locke is very clear on thispoint. In short, we can justify Locke's idea of the joint ownership of the Earth in the

    16. Accordingo Yolton,"Lockewas in factrejectingwo features f the traditionaloctrine:that theoriginal ommunity f thingswas anownership nd thatconsent s requisiteortheacquisitionf property"pp.188-89).ButYoltongivesno reason or hisassertionhatLockedid notregardheoriginalommunitys anownership.17. D.1,1,1,3: us naturale st,quodnaturaomniaanimalia ocuit:nam us istud non humanigenerisproprium,ed omnium nimalium, uae n terra,quae n marinascuntur,viumquoque ommuneest.

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    432 InternationalournalftheClassicalraditionSpring997

    state of naturesimply by way of every person'snatural nstinct and rightto survive.18This joint ownership is by the entirety and not a system of predeterminedlimitedshares,because in the absence ofpolitical organization here is no way to set up such asystem.Whatis most surprisingabout Locke'sapproachto these questions,for a modemreader,is how devious and complexit is, when the classical solution seems so simple.But Locke was constantly afraid of revealing himself as an advocate of unorthodoxpolitical opinions. Moreover,he would have been in a strangelyironic position if hehad made explicituse of Romanlegal theory, long associatedin the Englishmind withdespotism, as the basis of a new politicaltheoryof limitedparliamentarygovernment.Yet,that is implicitlyjustwhat he does.

    BibliographyDigesta ustinianiAugusti,ed. P.Bonfanteet al.,Milan:SocietaEditriceLibraria, 960.Filmer,SirRobert,Patriarcha,d. PeterLaslett,Oxford:Blackwell,1949.Harrison,John and P. Laslett,TheLibrary f JohnLocke, nd ed., Oxford: ClarendonPress,1971.Locke, John, Two Treatisesof Government,d. Peter Laslett, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress,1963.Plucknet,TheodoreF.T.,A ConciseHistoryof the CommonLaw,5th ed., Boston:Little,Brown&Co., 1956.Polin,Raymond,Lapolitiquemorale eJohnLocke, aris:Presses Universitairesde France,1960.Simonds,RogerT.,Rationalndividualism:hePerennial hilosophyfLegal nterpretation,Amsterdam:EditionsRodopi,1995.Tully,James,A Discourse n Property:ohnLocke nd hisAdversaries, ambridge:Cam-bridgeUniversityPress,1980.Yolton, John,Locke nd theCompass f HumanUnderstanding, ambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1970.

    18. A briefdiscussion f thispointandits importanceorjurisprudencendphilosophys inSimonds, 15-17.

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