But though he believed that many of our sins and propensities are bred in the bone, he disputed the other part of the proverb, and maintained that they might be got out of the flesh. And then generalizing with a rapidity worthy of Humboldt himself, he asserted that all political evils in modern ages and civilized states were mainly owing to a neglect of the medical art;—and that there would not, and could not be so many distempers in the body politic, if the _primæ viæ_ were but attended to with proper care; an opinion in which he was fortified by the authority of Sir William Temple. “I have observed the fate of _Campania_,” says that eminent statesman, “determine contrary to all appearances, by the caution and conduct of a General, which was attributed by those that knew him, to his age and infirmities, rather than his own true qualities, acknowledged otherwise to have been as great as most men of the age. I have seen the counsels of a noble country grow bold, or timorous, according to the fits of his good or ill-health that managed them, and the pulse of the Government beat high with that of the Governor; and this unequal conduct makes way for great accidents in the world. Nay, I have often reflected upon the counsels and fortunes of the greatest monarchies rising and decaying sensibly with the ages and healths of the Princes and chief officers that governed them. And I remember one great minister that confessed to me, when he fell into one of his usual fits of the gout, he was no longer able to bend his mind or thought to any public business, nor give audiences beyond two or three of his domestics, though it were to save a kingdom; and that this proceeded not from any violence of pain, but from a general languishing and faintness of spirits, which made him in those fits think nothing worth the trouble of one careful or solicitous thought. For the approaches, or lurkings of the Gout, the Spleen, or the Scurvy, nay the very fumes of indigestion, may indispose men to thought and to care, as well as diseases of danger and pain. Thus accidents of health grow to be accidents of State, and public constitutions come to depend in a great measure upon those of particular men; which makes it perhaps seem necessary in the choice of persons for great employments (at least such as require constant application and pains) to consider their bodies as well as their minds, and ages and health as well as their abilities.”