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1 9 6 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2absolutely original or fundamental right” but instead arises in order to preservemankind (151–52). Even our ownership of ourselves stops at the right tokill ourselves—a clear signal that human beings are above all “the propertyof God” (153). Our property rights, on Forde’s reading, are therefore only userights,“absolute within the human sphere, but not absolute simply.” Fordemaintains that such an interpretation of individual rights better accounts forthe apparent contradictions in Locke’s several writings than the Straussianexotericism/esotericism interpretation does (155).Forde argues that Locke follows not Hobbes but, to some degree, Aquinas,Grotius, and Pufendorf in these matters, particularly with respect to the existenceof common property at the origins of human life and the authorizationof private property “by a principle of the common good” derived from theoriginal condition (162). But Locke “makes [private] property more fundamentalthan it is for his predecessors,” inasmuch as “natural and divine law”established it, not human consent or convention; in a well-known passage,Locke describes how human beings “mixed their labor” with natural objects,thereby not merely acquiring them but acquiring a right to them, by dint ofthat effort (163). Further, the state of nature was a state of scarcity—“the originalprovision was necessarily inadequate”—so human beings needed privateproperty not merely for “social progress, but for human survival” (174). In afascinating teaching derived partly from scripture, Locke claims that “God,when he gave the World in common to all Mankind, commanded Man alsoto labour” (175). (In Genesis, God does indeed do those two things, but atdifferent times and in different circumstances—one before and one after thehumans sinned.) The standard set by the common good remains, but theright of the individual is unalienable—as it is not for Grotius or Pufendorf.As Forde puts it, “God is aware of basic economic principles. He is aware thatif the love of money is the root of many evils, it is also the source of generalgood. In all its honest forms, therefore, he smiles on this love. He knows thatthe pursuit of one’s own interest is not the expression of a corrupt or fallennature, but a benign, indeed useful attribute” (176). Accordingly, while theFirst Treatise commends charity, the Second Treatise makes justice a matter ofprotecting property, broadly defined to include natural rights. He “does notprovide us with any systematic account of how ‘justice’ and ‘charity’ relate toone another” (184). “Many Christians of Locke’s day, and for ages past, wouldbe surprised to learn that the biblical injunction ‘be fruitful and multiply’signifies, among other things, God’s approval of the limitless acquisition ofwealth”—with, to be sure, a concomitant moral if not political duty to sharethe wealth acquired. Locke’s advocacy of religious toleration as a duty (“the