GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOCIETY. ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 491
Comments Upon and Criticism of Locke's Views.
From the foregoing, it will be seen that power is vested
by Locke in the people. Power is delegated by them, or
rather by a majority ofthem, to a government for the special
purpose of preserving the rights which each individual
possesses by nature and brings into society. In order that
it may fulfil the function with which it is entrusted, the
government is required from time to time to make laws
and to enforce them. If at any time it acts contrary to
the wishes of the majority, the people have the right
to withdraw from it the powers which they have delegated
to it and to delegate them to another government. Just
as Hobbes's philosophy afforded an admirable basis for
the political doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, so
Locke's two Treatises of Government could be invoked to
justify the revolution of 1688. Published in 1690, the
Treatises were in fact designed with this object.
Although, however, it is with the people as a whole,
or rather with the majority of the people, that power
rests, such power is never for Locke absolute; it is always
subject to the over riding governance of the law of nature:
" A government", he writes, "is not free to do as it pleases.
. . . The law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all
men, legislators as well as others." The law of nature is
directly derived from the belief in the omnipotence and
benevolence of a creative God. Granted the assumption
that such a law exists and that it is an expression of God's
will, Locke's detailed development of the implications
of the assumption, is, except in one respect, both logical
and convincing. The one is exception his adherence to the
dogma of the Social Contract.
Doctrine of the Social Contract Superfluous. One
of the most admirable features of Locke's philosophy is
the distinction which he introduces between society and
the government. Having admitted this distinction, Locke
should logically have proceeded to abandon the Social
Contract theory of the origin of society altogether; for