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