Note 74 — NOTES.1
Gertrude Carman Bussey translation
“Nature’s first care, when the chyle enters the blood, is to excite in it a kind of fever.” Thus, warmth is the first necessity for the body. Compare with this, Descartes’s statement: “There is a continual warmth in our heart, ... this fire is the bodily principle of all the movements of our members.”90 This is one of the many instances in which La Mettrie’s account of the mechanism of the body is similar to that of Descartes.