make out property, upon a supposition that God gave the world 
to Adam, and his posterity in common, it is impossible that any 
man, but one universal monarch, should have any property upon a 
supposition, that God gave the world to Adam, and his heirs in 
succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity.  But I 
shall endeavour to shew, how men might come to have a property 
in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and 
that without any express compact of all the commoners.

     Sec. 26.  God, who hath given the world to men in common, 
hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best 
advantage of life, and convenience.  The earth, and all that is 
therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their 
being.  And tho' all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts 
it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by 
the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a 
private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of 
them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given 
for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to 
appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any 
use, or at all beneficial to any particular man.  The fruit, or 
venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no 
enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so 
his, i.e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any 
right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his 
life.

     Sec. 27.  Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be 
common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own 
person: this no body has any right to but himself.  The 
labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, 
are properly his.  Whatsoever then he removes out of the state 
that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his 
labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and 
thereby makes it his property.  It being by him removed from 
the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this 
labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right 
of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property 
of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is 
once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left 
in common for others.

     Sec. 28.  He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up 
under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the 
wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself.  No body can 
deny but the nourishment is his.  I ask then, when did they begin 
to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? 
or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? and it 
is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else 
could.  That labour put a distinction between them and common: 
that added something to them more than nature, the common mother 
of all, had done; and so they became his private right.  And will 
any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus 
appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to 
make them his?  Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what 
belonged to all in common?  If such a consent as that was 
necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had 
given him.  We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that 
it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out 
of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property; 
without which the common is of no use.  And the taking of this or 
that part, does not depend on the express consent of all the 
commoners.  Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant 
has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a 
right to them in common with others, become my property, 
without the assignation or consent of any body.  The labour 
that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were 
in, hath fixed my property in them.

     Sec. 29.  By making an explicit consent of every commoner, 
necessary to any one's appropriating to himself any part of what 
is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat, 
which their father or master had provided for them in common, 

without assigning to every one his peculiar part.  Though the 
water running in the fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt, 
but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out?  His 
labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was 
common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath 
thereby appropriated it to himself.

     Sec. 30.  Thus this law of reason makes the deer that 
Indian's who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who 
hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before it was the common 
right of every one.  And amongst those who are counted the 
civilized part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive 
laws to determine property, this original law of nature, for 
the beginning of property, in what was before common, still 
takes place; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in 
the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind; or 
what ambergrise any one takes up here, is by the labour that 
removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made his 
property, who takes that pains about it.  And even amongst us, 
the hare that any one is hunting, is thought his who pursues her 
during the chase: for being a beast that is still looked upon as 
common, and no man's private possession; whoever has employed so 
much labour about any of that kind, as to find and pursue her, 
has thereby removed her from the state of nature, wherein she was 
common, and hath begun a property.