The Second Treatise of Government by John Locke places sovereignty into the hands of people. Locke imagined an original state of nature in which individuals rely upon their own strength. His argument is that people are equal and invested with natural rights in a state of nature in which they live free from inside and outside rule. The state of nature has a base on the law of everyone being equal and independent. However, "though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license." Therefore, "no one ought to harm one another in his life, health, liberty or possessions." Nobody has the right to treat human beings as instruments to their own satisfaction or even have power over another human being; everyone is free and enjoy the gain from their own work. If someone violates the natural law, he is considered as an aggressor and every man has the right to make the aggressor pay for his aggression.

On Locke's view, all rights begin in the individual property inter

Locke and Rousseau have a lot in common defining the nature and functions of government. They both view civil society built upon the natural rights common to people who need and welcome an executive power and who submit their natural freedoms to the common laws of the government, which, in return, protects their property and liberties. However, Rousseau extends the purposes of uniting and making civil laws, which serve to protect not only one's property, but also the "unfortunate" ones.

However, in contrast to Locke, Rousseau strongly emphasizes that the natural condition of humanity is disguised by the corruptive influence of society. "From the cultivation of land, its division necessarily followed; and from property once recognized; the first rules of justice." Since people are born with different talents, there is natural inequality among men; therefore, one would use his "mind, beauty, strength, or skill" for his own advantage. This, as Rousseau says, led to deceptive cunning, conspicuous ostentation, and all the vices that follow from them, and it destroyed natural freedom. As a result, "the human race, debased and desolated, no longer able to turn back or renounce the unhappy acquisitions it had made, and working only toward its shame by abusing the facultie

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