John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. In his 'Two Treatises of Government,' he argued against the divine right of kings and proposed that government should be based on the consent of the governed. He famously asserted that all individuals are born with natural rights to 'life, liberty, and property.' Locke’s theory of the 'tabula rasa' (blank slate) suggested that the human mind is born without innate ideas and that knowledge is determined only by experience and perception. His ideas deeply influenced the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, providing the intellectual framework for modern representative democracy and the protection of individual rights.