Note 6 — FREDERIC THE GREAT’S EULOGY ON JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE. (continued 2)
Gertrude Carman Bussey translation
In a company, or at table, he always required a rampart of chairs or else some one close to him at the left, to prevent his seeing horrible abysses into which (in spite of his understanding these illusions) he sometimes feared that he might fall. What a frightful result of imagination, or of the peculiar circulation in a lobe of the brain! Great man on one side of his nature, on the other he was half-mad. Madness and wisdom, each had its compartment, or its lobe, the two separated by a fissure. Which was the side by which he was so strongly attached to Messieurs of Port Royal? (I have read this in an extract from the treatise on vertigo by M. de la Mettrie.) ↑