According to Locke, false ideas and evil actions are often results of harmful social institutions, and certain forms of government are naturally more right or wrong for human beings than others. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, he believed in the existence of a natural right and wrong, which was not invented by men and which could even conflict with the statutory laws of particular nations. He contended that each individual possesses, independently of any state, the natural right to "life, liberty, and property." Locke spelled out in some detail how the title to property is obtained, in effect defining the free market as we understand it today (cf. pp. 4.5:13-5). Locke's concept of natural right, as the student may have noted, in effect restates the ethical principle of the non-initiation of force, which we developed in Section 3 (pp. 3.12:5-12). The term "natural right" is fully appropriate, inasmuch as this principle derives directly from the requirements of human nature, in particular from the fact that men and women need to be able to think and act autonomously in order to function as rational, productive beings.

Men in a "state of nature," Locke observed, cannot fully protect what is "proper" to them, i. e., their property (including their lives). Therefore they form, by an implied social contract, a government vested with limited powers to provide such protection from aggressors. Locke's notion of a "social contract" is sometimes ridiculed, perhaps because it is obvious that all individuals have never literally "signed" such an agreement. The idea, however, is consistent with an observation made repeatedly in Sections 3 and 4—namely, that human freedom and human welfare depend on a social consensus to refrain from the initiation of force. (See, for example, p. 4.11:83, including the "Details" box, and pp. 3.12:9-10.)