While Locke can be severe, and makes it extremely clear the harm that a bad government or an abuse of federal power can cause, his mood is overall optimistic throughout the Second Treatise. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Locke believes that human nature is essentially inclined towards a high functioning society that respects both the autonomy of the individual and the natural (divine) laws of the land—and he believes that a good government can efficiently navigate between these two interests.
As he begins his work in Chapter 1, he urges the reader to believe that government is not
the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.
The Second Treatise is Locke’s effort to refute the ideas of authors like Robert Filmer who believed that absolute monarchy was the one true form of government. As the above passage displays, there is also an urgency to the optimistic mood in the book: opponents of Locke's political philosophy abounded in the 17th century, and he wrote the Second Treatise as much to persuade the reader as to explain his own thinking.
