Note 8 — FREDERIC THE GREAT’S EULOGY ON JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE.

There are as many different minds, different characters, and different customs, as there are different temperaments. Even Galen8 knew this truth which Descartes carried so far as to claim that medicine alone can change minds and morals, along with bodies. (By the writer of “L’histoire de l’âme,”9 this teaching is incorrectly attributed to Hippocrates.10) It is true that melancholy, bile, phlegm, blood etc.—according to the nature, the abundance, and the different combination of these humors—make each man different from another.11