Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature. (Hobbes, p 444)
Thanks for the quotation. Funny, I was just this a.m. catching up on the April issue of Harper's. It has Lapham's annual "Notebook" column on the World Economic Forum, and his usual, beautifully written, pointless satire of lost soul global-businessmen. This time he worried about the commercialization of patriotism at the Superbowl (which he watched from Bill Clinton's Harlem office, of course). He ends the column with a reminder that the Leviathan can't read.
Then on to an article, "Eternal Winter," on the fading Aral Sea. Another wonderfully written piece that concludes we're all a bunch of scoundrels, the Americans only a little less since we can afford to clean up our messes.
Both are wrong. They're wrong because they can't understand, as Machiavelli tells us, a free people take care of themselves. And I'm not sure I don't mind putting it on the face of a building.