So, according to Locke, for any person, "The 'labour' of his body and the 'work' of his hands, we may say, are properly his" (p. 20).
Someone might ask, though, how does "owning" ourselves feed us, when the food that nature provides belongs, as Locke suggests, to everyone? The answer is that, as Locke says above, we also own our labor. This leads Lock to a central idea in his thinking:
Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, 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 placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men (p. 20).
Locke gives a few examples of this. One of his examples is water coming from a natural fountain or spring. "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?" (p. 21). What Locke seems to be saying is that so long as the water is ju
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