Second Treatise of Government Literary Devices

Explanation and Analysis—The Most Dangerous Game:

In Chapter 3, Locke discusses warfare as a state of being for humanity—which is to say, he examines how human nature permits the adaptation of societal norms to the unique circumstances of war. Locke makes a powerful simile that compares men who make war as wild animals that can be killed, like an animal, accordingly:

…one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

Locke is clear in The Second Treatise that to make war is to forfeit one’s claim to humanity and to equal treatment under the law—and in this passage, he emphasizes that transition through the dehumanizing comparison of a man who wages war as a “wolf or a lion” who may be justly killed like a “beast of prey."

This passage expresses an important sentiment in Locke's political philosophy: while Locke advocates for nonviolent civil society ruled by just governments with the "consent of the people," he is quick to assure the reader that violence can still be justified if one's inherent freedom is threatened by another.

Explanation and Analysis—Checks and Balances:

In Chapter 15, Locke makes a small simile as a parenthetical aside. He compares how “strict observation of the law” can nonetheless lead to harm or injury with how, in an effort to stop a fire from spreading, an "innocent man's house" might be torn down:

…all the members of the society are to be preserved: for since many accidents may happen, wherein a strict and rigid observation of the laws may do harm; (as not to pull down an innocent man’s house to stop the fire, when the next to it is burning) and a man may come sometimes within the reach of the law, which makes no distinction of persons, by an action that may deserve reward and pardon; 'tis fit the ruler should have a power, in many cases, to mitigate the severity of the law, and pardon some offenders…

Such a simile emphasizes an important point in Locke’s larger philosophical argument in this chapter: inevitably, laws will sometimes fail to prevent some kinds of harm from befalling citizens within a society, and that therefore it is important to have a “ruler” with the discretion to navigate these exceptions and “mitigate” the strict nature of law in order to preserve the dignity and rights of the citizen. Despite believing that all humanity is inherently equal, Locke nonetheless believes that some hierarchies of power should be preserved in order to provide checks and balances to the inevitable fallibility of the law.

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Explanation and Analysis—Nation-building :

Throughout The Second Treatise, Locke turns to a motif of framing a house as a simile that represents the establishment of government—a clever pun, given that "to frame" also means to conceive of an idea or plan (for instance, the group that met to draft the constitution of the United States is also known as the "framers" of the constitution).

In Chapter 16, Locke uses this simile to explain away the idea that "conquest" could be a valid way of establishing a government:

THOUGH governments can originally have no other rise than that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on any thing but the consent of the people; […] many have mistaken the force of arms for the consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals of government. But conquest is as far from setting up any government, as demolishing a house is from building a new one in the place. Indeed, it often makes way for a new frame of a common-wealth, by destroying the former; but, without the consent of the people, can never erect a new one.

By using these terms, Locke makes clear the futility of destruction as an act of nation-building: a government is like a house, and you can't build a new house just by demolishing the old one. And the only way to establish a "new frame" for the new house is to get together and build one, just like a new government will require the full consent of the people especially in the aftermath of an old system's collapse.

In Chapter 19, Locke turns to this comparison once more:

The world is too well instructed in, and too forward to allow of, this way of dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of it; and there wants not much argument to prove, that where the society is dissolved, the government cannot remain; that being as impossible, as for the frame of an house to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and dissipated by a whirl-wind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.

In this passage, Locke emphasizes the importance of a functioning society in supporting a government. This time, he compares a government standing alone without a society to support it to the frame of a house standing after a storm when the rest of the house—walls, roof, floors, furniture—has been ripped away by some storm or natural disaster. A frame cannot survive in these conditions, and likewise a government cannot persist without a surrounding society. (Locke also insists that the inverse is true: a society will not last long without a government).

Throughout the Second Treatise, Locke examines the family—as a microcosm for the structure of government. Through the motif of the house and its frame explored above, Locke continues this strain of analogy by exploring the dynamics not of the household but of a literal "house."

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Explanation and Analysis—Land Economy:

In Chapter 16, Locke examines how conquest affects the development of functioning governments and societies. As he describes the impact of such conquest, he uses a simile to distinguish between agricultural and economic costs to the state:

The destruction of a year’s product or two (for it seldom reaches four or five) is the utmost spoil that usually can be done: for as to money, and such riches and treasure taken away, these are none of nature’s goods, they have but a fantastical imaginary value: nature has put no such upon them: they are of no more account by her standard, than the wampompeke of the Americans to an European prince, or the silver money of Europe would have been formerly to an American.

This simile highlights the arbitrary nature of money as a spoil of war: currency does not retain its value across societal contexts, so the “wampompeke” of indigenous Americans means nothing to a European prince just like European silver would mean nothing to an indigenous American.

In making this comparison, Locke highlights that the destruction of agriculture or agricultural means of production is, in fact, the way to impact the functioning of a society through warfare or conquest. This an important step in the construction of Locke's argument about the right and the wrong ways to go about conquering and exerting power over another nation or people. After the above passage, he insists that this is the very reason why a conquerer does not have the right to the land of the conquered: it is too valuable.

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Explanation and Analysis—Divine Power:

Throughout his Second Treatise of Government, Locke is very serious about the power of religion—and the binding power of divine law. In Chapter 16, during his discussion of "conquest," Locke uses hyperbole and simile to emphasize how this "eternal law" is strong enough to constrain even an absolute monarch:

…[Princes] owe subjection to the laws of God and nature. No body, no power, can exempt them from the obligations of that eternal law. Those are so great, and so strong, in the case of promises, that omnipotency itself can be tied by them. Grants, promises, and oaths, are bonds that hold the Almighty: whatever some flatterers say to princes of the world, who all together, with all their people joined to them, are, in comparison of the great God, but as a drop of the bucket, or dust on the balance, inconsiderable, nothing!

"Omnipotency itself"—that is, absolute power itself, like that wielded by the hypothetical monarch in Locke's passage—pales in comparison to the divine law to which Locke believes everyone, regardless of their social status or political position, is ultimately subject. This is a classic example of the kind of hyperbole that drives Locke's most emphatic arguments: his political philosophy relies on his articulation of an extraordinary divine will that drives humanity toward self-organization within government, and such a worldview inevitably comes with a bit of melodrama.

Locke's extreme language continues in this passage with his simile that compares the great leaders of the world, or the princes, to a "drop of the bucket” in the face of God. Locke wants the reader to remember that everything on earth (including politics, society, and human law) is small change compared to the power of God and divine law.

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Explanation and Analysis—Power and its Abuses:

In Chapter 18, Locke discusses tyranny, or the oppressive rule of a government. As he sets out to define tyranny for the reader, he makes a simile that compares it to “usurpation,” or the overthrow of a government:

AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage.

In making this simile, Locke also establishes an important analogy for his theory of government: all wrongful manipulation of power is fundamentally similar, and both the theft of someone else's power and the abuse of one's own power involve taking self-serving advantage of that power to begin with.

Through this comparison, however, Locke also makes a vital distinction: tyranny is an unnatural state of rule because it requires using power that “no body” has the right to use—which is even worse than usurpation, because the tyrant retains the power of others for use as his own. This passage is an important example of how Locke conceives of political power and its uses (and abuses) in his Second Treatise, and how he builds his case against the model of the absolute monarchy that was prevalent in western Europe at the time.

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Explanation and Analysis—Escaping Algiers:

In Chapter 18, Locke explores the nature of tyranny and the possible resources that a society might have to escape the grip of a tyrant. He makes an extended simile in order to emphasize the people's right to revolution:

If a long train of actions shew the councils all tending that way; how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which way things are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he could from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was carrying him, and the rest of the company, to Algiers, when he found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to again, as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him?

In Locke’s view, resistance is sometimes necessary in order to escape from tyranny—and if a society cannot determine when resistance to government is needed, a tyrant could take advantage of the situation. In his simile, Locke compares the people's right to resist tyranny to the right of a man on a ship heading to Algiers to save himself from his fate while the ship is meandering towards its destination.

If that doesn't immediately make sense, it's because there is some historical context that is vital to understanding this simile: Algiers, now the capital of Algeria, was a prominent city in the Mediterranean slave trade at the time that Locke was writing the Second Treatise in the 17th century. Locke's implication is therefore that the man heading towards Algiers is heading towards being sold into slavery—therefore, the simile is really comparing a man's right to resist slavery (one form of absolute power that can be exercised over a human being) with the people's right to resist a tyrant (another form of such power).

Locke is arguing that humanity must believe its instincts when something seems to be wrong—and if "a long train of actions" suggest that a government is heading toward tyranny, the best time to bring that process to a halt is before the tyrant has seized total control.

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Explanation and Analysis—Nation-building :

Throughout The Second Treatise, Locke turns to a motif of framing a house as a simile that represents the establishment of government—a clever pun, given that "to frame" also means to conceive of an idea or plan (for instance, the group that met to draft the constitution of the United States is also known as the "framers" of the constitution).

In Chapter 16, Locke uses this simile to explain away the idea that "conquest" could be a valid way of establishing a government:

THOUGH governments can originally have no other rise than that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on any thing but the consent of the people; […] many have mistaken the force of arms for the consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals of government. But conquest is as far from setting up any government, as demolishing a house is from building a new one in the place. Indeed, it often makes way for a new frame of a common-wealth, by destroying the former; but, without the consent of the people, can never erect a new one.

By using these terms, Locke makes clear the futility of destruction as an act of nation-building: a government is like a house, and you can't build a new house just by demolishing the old one. And the only way to establish a "new frame" for the new house is to get together and build one, just like a new government will require the full consent of the people especially in the aftermath of an old system's collapse.

In Chapter 19, Locke turns to this comparison once more:

The world is too well instructed in, and too forward to allow of, this way of dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of it; and there wants not much argument to prove, that where the society is dissolved, the government cannot remain; that being as impossible, as for the frame of an house to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and dissipated by a whirl-wind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.

In this passage, Locke emphasizes the importance of a functioning society in supporting a government. This time, he compares a government standing alone without a society to support it to the frame of a house standing after a storm when the rest of the house—walls, roof, floors, furniture—has been ripped away by some storm or natural disaster. A frame cannot survive in these conditions, and likewise a government cannot persist without a surrounding society. (Locke also insists that the inverse is true: a society will not last long without a government).

Throughout the Second Treatise, Locke examines the family—as a microcosm for the structure of government. Through the motif of the house and its frame explored above, Locke continues this strain of analogy by exploring the dynamics not of the household but of a literal "house."

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Second Treatise of Government

John Locke

Second Treatise of Government: Similes 7 key examples