 Whereas Augustine had held that in the state of innocence there would have been no lordship of man over man, Thomas says that there would have been dominium [lordship] in the state of innocence  (Summa, 1, q. 96, a. 4).  This has sometimes been taken as a rejection of Augustine in favour of Aristotle’s doctrine that politics is natural. However, Thomas says that in the state of innocence there would have been no coercion, but there would have been government in the sense of wise leadership voluntarily accepted by the less wise. This is a view found not in Aristotle but in earlier Latin writers, for example Seneca (see  §3),  and the contradiction with Augustine is merely verbal—for Augustine dominium implies coercion, for Thomas its sense is broader.