Question

Select the correct text in the passage.

Answer 1

This portion of the text emphasizes the natural rights of people:

• Man being born ...  with a title to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of Nature ...  hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property— that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men

Explanation:

Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke believed that using reason will guide us to the best ways to operate in order to create the most beneficial conditions for society.  For Locke, this included a conviction that all human beings have certain natural rights which are to be protected and preserved.    Locke's ideal was one that promoted individual freedom and equal rights and opportunity for all.  Each individual's well-being (life, health, liberty, possessions) should be served by the way government and society are arranged.  

Here's another excerpt section from Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690), in which he expresses the ideas of natural rights:

• The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions… (and) when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.