He says though, assuming that their selfhood is not an illusion, animals cannot be considered in and of themselves. “Man is to be understood only in his relation to God. The beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and, through man, to God.” Lewis then tries to correct the notion that many people have that the ‘real’ or ‘natural’ animal is the wild one while the tame animal is unnatural. Lewis says that Christians must believe that since they were given dominion over beasts that everything they do concerning them is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse. So the tame animal is the only natural one and any real self it has is owed entirely to its master, and if the animal does have immortality it is through their master. Lewis admits that he’s only talking about a privileged case and not about wild animals or those ill-treated domestic ones.