For example, he specified that “natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule (p. 205).” It must be understood that even the notion of the “law of nature” was a novel, new idea made possible only by the recent scientific discoveries of the time. Locke’s theories on politics and government were made possible by the Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity as a law of nature.
In contrast to the definition of natural liberty in which only the laws of nature govern, Locke discussed the value of a social contract of government which limits some natural individual liberties for the benefit of the common good:
the liberty of man, in society, is to be under no legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it (p.…