 John Locke defined political power as “a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less Penalties” (Two Treatises 2.3). Locke’s theory of punishment is thus central to his view of politics and part of what he considered innovative about his political philosophy. But he also referred to his account of punishment as a “very strange doctrine” (2.9), presumably because it ran against the assumption that only political sovereigns could punish. Locke believed that punishment requires that there be a law, and since the state of nature has the law of nature to govern it, it is permissible to describe one individual as “punishing” another in that state. Locke’s rationale is that since the fundamental law of nature is that mankind be preserved and since that law would “be in vain” with no human power to enforce it (Two Treatises 2.7), it must, therefore, be legitimate for individuals to punish each other even before government exists. In arguing this, Locke was disagreeing with Samuel Pufendorf (1934). Samuel Pufendorf had argued strongly that the concept of punishment made no sense apart from an established positive legal structure.