III


Locke's _Two Treatises of Government_ are different both in object and
in value. The first is a detailed and tiresome response to the historic
imagination of Sir Robert Filmer. In his _Patriarcha_, which first saw
the light in 1680, though it had been written long before, the latter
had sought to reach the ultimate conclusion of Hobbes without the
element of contract upon which the great thinker depended. "I consent
with him," said Filmer of Hobbes, "about the Rights of _exercising_
Government, but I cannot agree to his means of acquiring it." That power
must be absolute, Filmer, like Hobbes, has no manner of doubt; but his
method of proof is to derive the title of Charles I from Adam. Little
difficulties like the origin of primogeniture, or whence, as Locke
points out, the universal monarchy of Shem can be derived, the good Sir
Robert does not satisfactorily determine. Locke takes him up point by
point, and there is little enough left, save a sense that history is the
root of institutions, when he has done. What troubles us is rather why
Locke should have wasted the resources of his intelligence upon so
feeble an opponent. The book of Hobbes lay ready to his hand; yet he
almost ostentatiously refused to grapple with it. The answer doubtless
lies in Hobbes' unsavory fame. The man who made the Church a mere
department of the State and justified not less the title of Cromwell
than of the Stuarts was not the opponent for one who had a very
practical problem in hand. And Locke could answer that he was answering
Hobbes implicitly in the second _Treatise_. And though Filmer might
never have been known had not Locke thus honored him by retort, he
doubtless symbolized what many a nobleman's chaplain preached to his
master's dependents at family prayers.