The First Treatise of Government

Locke then examines contradictions in Filmer’s assertion that monarchical power derives from the combination of fatherhood and property, which Filmer calls the “natural and private dominion of Adam” (86). If Adam exercised dominion over Eve, for instance, as Filmer claims, then neither fatherhood nor property could account for his authority in that case. Furthermore, heirs might inherit property, but they cannot inherit fatherhood. Locke shows that both of Adam’s sons, Cain and Abel, inherited property, yet the inheritance did not give one brother dominion over the other. The same was true of Noah’s three sons. Locke thus concludes that fatherhood and property together cannot confer monarchical power.

In this brief chapter, which is less than four pages in length, Locke presents a series of quotations in which Filmer offers conflicting answers to the question of how Adam’s original monarchical power descended to posterity. In one passage of Patriarcha, Filmer argues that the method by which kings acquire their crowns is irrelevant, for all that matters is that they wield supreme power. Locke notes that by Filmer’s reckoning, which Locke labels “so strange a doctrine” (96), there would be no such thing as a usurper.