John Locke certainly knew how to write.

John Locke seems to take the approach, "Before learning how to run, one needs to learn how to walk," or more appropriately, before we learn how to govern ourselves, we must learn nature's governing of people.  He explains that the natural state in which we live is one of freedom, equality, liberty, etc (chpt. 2).  These general terms and ideals are ones in which people (consciously or subconsciously) live by on a daily basis without government.  Therefore, it would be stupid, to put it frankly, to not include these terms and ideals into our government.  Also, nature seems to provide a logical background for our laws, rights, morals and so on.  For example, if nature believes murdering another human being is wrong, then we can come to the assumption that our laws, rights and morals would be in accordance to nature.  Even if we believe it or not, humans are a part of nature (even though Locke and Hooker seem to argue that nature has given us an advantage over all other natural things).  Nature lays the groundwork for our species to follow and it would only be logical for our government to be in line with that groundwork.

When a person leaves this state of nature, there seems to be one state that a person can travel into: state of war.  Locke argues that a state of war is only necessary and important when others do not or cannot comply to the "state of nature".  That is when others are not acting according to the ideals of the "state of nature" either through violence, inequality, or unreason directed towards that person, a person can use tactics involved in the state of war to save himself from danger (chpt. 3).  This switch from state of nature to state of war seems to be an individual thing, but it does sound like those in a nation would collectively as individuals switch if the danger was affecting all of those individuals directly.