Locke thus traverses the ground Hobbes had covered in his _Leviathan_ though he rejects every premise of the earlier thinker.

To Hobbes the state of nature which precedes political organization had been a state of war.
Neither peace nor reason could prevail where every man was his neighbor's enemy; and the establishment of absolute power, with the consequent surrender by men of all their natural liberties, was the only means of escape from so brutal a regime.

That the state of nature was so distinguished Locke at the outset denies.

The state of nature is governed by the law of nature.

The law of nature is not, as Hobbes had made it, the antithesis of real law, but rather its condition antecedent.