John Locke and Politics

The former can be deciphered as something which comes to one's mind due to an 'inner' experience called reflection. The latter is nothing but a combination of the former.
             Concept of Human Nature.
             Locke's view on man is summed up in his Essay on Human Understanding. He believed that the spring of all action is desire. It is feeling of uneasiness identified with pain, a feeling of which men want to somehow rid of themselves. The main objective of all humans is to get rid of this pain by replacing it with pleasure. In Locke's words, "What has an aptness to produce pleasure in us is what we call good, and what apt is to produce pain in us we call evil". .
             Locke's philosophy on human nature was greatly influenced by the hard times in which he lived and was involved in. During times of extreme distress and also when in political exile, he noticed the vicious aspects of human nature. But, unlike Hobbes, he did experience and study the positive and beautiful side of humans as well. He experienced the goodness of human nature. His whole political theory is based on his perception of human nature. He did believe in Hobbes's, 'means satisfy the ends' theory but only to a certain extent. He disagreed about the ways the means are obtained, thus making him very moral in his approach. He might seem to be straightforward but he adds to his philosophy a theory of morals which could be really confusing. He opined in his Essay on Human Understanding, (in three chapters) that there are no universally binding moral laws. He explained in terms of history by stating that the morality of one society is the immorality of the other. He also compared morals to mathematics by saying that it is a demonstrable science which is subject to universal laws. Further explaining what those universal laws are, he noted that they were of two types, namely – Divine Law and Natural Law. The Divine Law is justified to be God's will for man's behaviour, which can be obtained by man from the concept of divine revelation and by use of his own intellect and reasoning capabilities.