Descartes isn’t worried that we have absolute rule over all animals, because he agrees that some animals are stronger than us and that they also have the ability of being cunning and deceiving the most clever, aware, artful human being. The most one can say that though animals do not perform actions that show us that they have any sense of thought or reason and that they think knowing that they are physically close to us, it may conclude that there is some sort of thought stuck to our organs that would enable us to think, reason and experience in ourselves but of a much less perfect kind. Thus, they can occur in animals even more violently than in us, without being able to conclude that they have thoughts.
Montaigne and Charon may have said
Montaigne and Charon may have said