“It seems to me, Usbek, that all our judgements are made with reference covertly to ourselves. I do not find it surprising that the negroes paint the devil sparkling white, and their gods black as coal, or that certain tribes have a Venus with her breasts hanging down to her thighs, or in brief that all the idolatrous peoples represent their gods with human faces, and endow them will all their own impulses. It has been well said that if triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.”

—Montesquieu, Persian Letters, 1721, translated by C.J.Betts, 1973.