"AND God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion." Thus is recorded in the first chapter of Genesis the first statement of God's law of dominion for man. Never from then until now has God annulled this law; nor will He ever annul it. It would be as impossible to blot out this law as for God Himself to be extinguished.
Although those who have believed in the one God have generally acknowledged that His power must be supreme, that His will must constitute law, and that He must therefore have control over His own works, nevertheless they have not always been able to understand how man could be endowed with dominion, or just what such dominion implied.
Because men have believed themselves to be personal and corporeal, they have supposed that such dominion could only mean protection for these corporeal persons. As a consequence, a large portion of the world still believes that for men to exercise dominion is simply for them to prove themselves superior to whatever interferes either with their prosperity or with what is supposedly needed to add thereto, be it material things, fowls, fishes, beasts, or men. From the beginning of religious history there has always been visible some gleam of intelligence which has hinted that this was not exactly what God had intended when He bestowed dominion on man; but, excepting with those most spiritually-minded in every age, the light has seemed faint and the mistaken sense of dominion has appeared to flourish, producing in its wake all sorts of strife, from that between individuals to that between nations, even at times claiming to involve nearly an entire world.
