Nature hath provided. . . but for whom?

AMIDST getting carried away in the end-of-year shelving process (and realising I’ve read one book for every 13 acquired) I stumbled upon this memorable quote from my political philosophy module at university:

“The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”