and subjected to the
political power of another, without his own consent. The only way
whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the
bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite
into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one
amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a
greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men
may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as
they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men
have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby
presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority
have a right to act and conclude the rest.

Sect. 96. For when any number of men have, by the consent of every
individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one
body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and
determination of the majority: for that which acts any community, being
only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to
that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should
move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent
of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one
body, one community, which the consent of every individual that united
into it, agreed that it should; and so every one is bound by that
consent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we see, that in
assemblies, impowered to act by positive laws, where no number is set by
that positive law which impowers them, the act of the majority passes
for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the
law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.

Sect. 97. And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body
politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every
one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and
to be concluded by it; or else this original compact, whereby he with
others incorporates into one society, would signify nothing, and be no
compact, if he be left free, and under no other ties than he was in
before in the state of nature. For what appearance would there be of any
compact? what new engagement if he were no farther tied by any decrees
of the society, than he himself thought fit, and did actually consent
to? This