error, and seducing men from the truth, are so much less to be honoured than brute beasts, as error is more vile than ignorance. So that it is not merely the nature of man, that makes him worthier than other living creatures, but the knowledge that he acquires by meditation, and by the right use of reason in making good rules of his future actions. The other advantage a man hath, is the use of his hands for the making of those things which are instrumental to his well-being. But this advantage is not a matter of so great honour, but that a man may speak negligently of it without offence. And for the dominion that a man hath over beasts, he saith, “it is lost in part for the sin of man, because the strongest creatures, as lions and bears, have withdrawn their obedience; but the most profitable and useful creatures, as sheep and oxen, do in some degree retain their obedience.” I would ask the Bishop, in what consisteth the dominion of man over a lion or a bear. Is it in an obligation of promise, or of debt? That cannot be; for they have no sense of debt or duty. And I think he will not say, that they have received a command to obey him from authority. It resteth therefore that the dominion of man consists in this, that men are too hard for lions and bears, because, though a lion or a bear be stronger than a man, yet the strength, and art, and especially the leaguing and societies of men, are a greater power than the ungoverned strength of unruly beasts. In this it is that consisteth this dominion of man. And for the same reason when a hungry lion meeteth an unarmed man in a desert, the lion hath the dominion over the man, if that of man over lions, or over sheep and oxen, may be called dominion, which properly it cannot; nor can it be said that sheep and oxen do otherwise obey us, than they would do a lion. And if we have dominion over sheep and oxen, we exercise it not as dominion, but as hostility; for we keep them only to labour, and to be killed and devoured by us; so that lions and bears would be as good masters to them as we are. By this short passage of his concerning _dominion_ and _obedience_, I have no reason to expect a very shrewd answer from him to my _Leviathan_. (_i_) “The next branch of his answer concerns consultations, which, saith he, ‘are not superfluous, though all things come to pass necessarily; because they are the cause which doth necessitate the effect, and the means to bring it to pass.’”