The most influential early expositors of systematic liberal theory were John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Locke ([1690] 1960) viewed individuals as endowed with and animated by reason, characterized as the "Voice of God,' through which they can dis- cern and act upon the dictates of divinely given natural law. From birth, all are equally endowed with this reason, which is the basis for their decisions to leave the state of nature, to enter into civil and political society, and to act in the community. Indivi- duals may and often do act irrationally that is, they debase their natural faculties and misapprehend what natural law requires but Locke seems to suppose that most people most of the time will exercise their reason, making a just law and government possible. Indeed, natural law and the reason apprehend it incline individuals to con- sider not only their own interests but those of others and thus to value social cooperation and self-restraint. In this way, they exhibit a kind of natural political virtue not altogether derivable from simple self-interest. Free- dom under government, to Locke, is not simply the absence of external restraint but also living in conformity with a predictable, non-arbitrary law to which one has directly or indirectly consented. It is "to have standing Rule to live by, common to every one of the Society, and made by the Leg- islative Power erected in it (Locke [1690] 1960: 324).