ree from all superior external powers. In society, Locke (1986, p. 17) saw the liberty of man as "under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it." What this suggests is that Locke held firmly that men constituted the state and accorded to it powers meant to be used on behalf of the best interests of citizens. The great end of uniting society into a commonwealth and allowing a government to make laws impacting upon individuals was in his view "the preservation of their property" (Locke, 1986, p. 70).
The Lockean formulation of government's obligations depends upon the willingness of individuals to submit themselves to a common government and a mutually binding set of laws that derive from the consent of the governed. Locke argued, as was revealed in the class of February 20, 2004, that individuals make society and that the good of the individual is a measure of the common good.
Rousseau (1987, p. 176) saw government as possessing an artificially represented in its body. For the body of government to have a meaningful existence, Rousseau (1987, p. 176) stated that "there must be a particular self, a sensibility common to all its members, a force or a will of its own that tends toward its preservation." Like John Locke, Rousseau seems to have taken the position that some type of agreement between the governed and the government must be in place in order for the government to have either validity or meaning. On this particular issue, the two philosophers tend to be generally in agreement.
Locke (1986, p. 75) affirmed this agreement by stating that "the legislative or supreme authority cannot assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing...