Stu Taba's Rogue Messiah: The Philosophical Wanderer Chapter 5 (Pgs. 53-55)

I was overwhelmed by the precise mechanics of Hobbes Leviathan,which reaches inescapable conclusions arrived at demonstratively by human reason.

     Leviathan begins with a bold metaphorical stance that reads

          NATURE (the Art whereby God hath made and governes the world) is by
     the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can
     make an Artificial Animal.

Thus, Hobbes asserts that as God uses the art of nature to create man (an artificial
animal), just so does man use artifice to create the artificial animal that is civil
society (the Leviathan).

     Elaborating on his claim that humans are artificial animals,

Hobbes rhetorically asks,

          For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves ,but so many springs;
     and the Joynts, but so many wheels; giving motion to the whole Body, such was
     intended by the Artificer?

Hobbes extends the range of his metaphor to encompass all of civil society:

          For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE, in latine CIVITAS) which is but an Artificiall Mann; though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul,as giving life and motion to the whole body; The Magistrates,and other Officers of Judicature and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and   Punishment(by which fastned to the seate of Soveraignty, every joynt and member is moved to perform his duty) are the Nerves,that do the same in the Body Naturall;  The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members, are the  Strength; Salus Populi (the peoples safety) its Businesse:Counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the Memory;Equity and Lawes, an artificiall Reason and Will;Concord, Health;Sedition,Sicknesse; and Civill war, Death.

Moreover, the

    Pacts and covenents, by which  the parts of this Body Politique were at first
made, set together, and united resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man,
pronounced by God in the Creation.

     I likened Hobbes's  Fiat to our own nation's Declaration of Indepence, which first
made, set together and united American society.  I tried using the Principle of Belief
Conservation to test this passage, but found that that standard is unsuited for the analysis
of metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word denoting one subject or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness between them. Metaphors are paradoxes- statements that seem contrary to common sense yet are perhaps true. Of course metaphors are not litterally true, but are meant to be figuratively taken.
     Thus, in this metaphorical passage, the human heart, nerves,and joints are likened to an  automaton's spring, strings, and wheels, then the human faculties are likened to the parts of civil government. The metaphor is paradoxical because-taken literally, a set of human organs are not the same as the counterpart set of an automaton's components nor are the workings of a civil society the same as the faculties of an individual human- yet, taken figuratively, an insightful likeness is revealed.