Filmer's political claims, like those of Locke in the Two Treatises, are set out not in a deductive philosophical system but as a critical commentary on a political theory which was charged with being distinctively novel. As a commentary it is almost as coherent in argument and fully as repetitive in style as that which Locke wrote to refute it. It would be as hard to construct Locke's philosophy and theology from the Two Treatises as it is to construct any epistemologically coherent philosophy from Patriarcha or the other Political Tracts. This, however, scarcely constitutes sufficient reason for us to follow Professor Greenleaf in elevating the latter work to the status of philosophy. For the reason why it is sensible to inquire into the philosophical location of the Two Treatises is not any self-evidently taut and systematic character in the work itself. The work has a place as a literary component of that historian's reification, the ‘philosophy of Locke’, precisely because there exist independently the most deeply etched philosophical contours within which it can be located. The precise conceptual geography may be, indeed is, highly dubious; but however blurred the boundaries may have been, it is clear that there must have been some boundaries. It is the known existence of a high degree of conceptual definition in some areas at some points in time which encourages the historian to grope for a similar definition of outline in other areas.