Yet even with these novelties, no estimate of his work would be complete which failed to take account of the foundations upon which he builded.
Herein, perhaps, the danger is lest we exaggerate Locke's dependence upon the earlier current of thought.

The social contract is at least as old as when Glaucon debated with Socrates in the market-place at Athens.
The theory of a state of nature, with the rights therein implied, is the contribution, through Stoicism, of the Roman lawyers, and the great medieval contrast to Aristotle's experimentalism.

To the latter, also, may be traced the separation of powers; and it was then but little more than a hundred years since Bodin had been taken to make the doctrine an integral part of scientific politics.

Nor is the theory of a right to revolution in any sense his specific creation.

So soon as the Reformation had given a new perspective to the problem of Church and State every element of Locke's doctrine had become a commonplace of debate.