The First Treatise of Government

Since Patriarcha offers no evidence that God vested absolute authority in Adam, or that this supposed investiture makes natural freedom impossible, Locke sets aside Patriarcha for the moment and continues to address Filmer’s Observations. In Observations, Filmer claims that God’s act of creation accounts for Adam’s sovereignty over the world. Locke notes that Adam at creation was not yet a father, so he could not have possessed fatherly authority, which Filmer equates with royal authority. Filmer had anticipated this objection, insisting that Adam, though not yet a father at creation and therefore not yet a monarch in fact, was nonetheless already a monarch “in habit” (20). Locke sardonically replies that Filmer must have been an author “in habit” before ever writing a book. Locke tires of this argument, apologizes to the reader for its tediousness, and insists that it was necessary to expose Filmer’s style, for Patriarcha, like Observations, is filled with such “bare assertions, joined to others of the same kind” (23).