richardpayton

 

2

Page history last edited by rlpayton@... 3 yrs ago

 

One: the Lanark Book Four frontispiece; Two: the frontispiece of the 1651 edition of Hobbes's Leviathan

 

Lanark caption: "By Art is formed that great Mechanical Man called a State, foremost of the Beasts of the Earth for Pride"

 

From Leviathan: "For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE, which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people's safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation."

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