I will post fuller notes later, but I wanted to get one passage up here. It is from the Introduction to Leviathan. In the first part of this passage, Hobbes articulates his mechanistic view of human beings in particularly vivid language. In the second part, he describes the state as an artificial man.
Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs 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. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of nature, man. For by art is created that great leviathan called a commonwealth, or state, (in Latin civitas) 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. (Hobbes [1651] 2019, 120–21)
If you are looking at comparing Hobbes and Descartes, for example, it is worth knowing that Hobbes thinks that all living animals are automata. Descartes thought that was true only of non-human animals.
The last sentence describes us as being like God because we can create an artificial man: the state. Hobbes is famous for describing human nature in unflattering terms. Keep in mind that he also thought we were like God. All of the other animals live in their natural condition. Human beings do not.