"The condition of existence I am describing is nothing more or less than ethical, cosmopolitan paganism--the gorgeous inheritance bestowed upon us by the pre-Christian societies of the Mediterranean whose idolatrous proclivities have never been obliterated or even subordinated in the Christian West. Nor are they likely to be. The vernacular of beauty is a part of that pagan inheritance. The whole rhetoric of commerce and practical science is a part of it, too, as are the foundational premises of this republic, whose framers embraced Cicero's insistence that the virtue of any politics is confirmed in the body of the citizen--in the corporeal safety and happiness of that single and collective body."
[Dave Hickey, The Invisible Dragon]
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