I Have Always Thought The Actions

From Book II, Chapter 21 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), in Locke's discussion of the will and moral agency. John Locke consistently argued that abstract declarations of principle are worth little without corresponding action — a conviction that shaped his political philosophy as well. In Two Treatises of Government (1689), he applied the same test to political power: the legitimacy of a government is shown by what it actually does for the governed, not by what it claims for itself.