THOMAS REID
FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES
The following Volumes are now ready:—
- THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson.
- ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton.
- HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask.
- JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes.
- ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun.
- THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie.
- RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless.
- SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson.
- THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie.
- JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask.
- TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton.
- FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond.
- THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir George Douglas.
- NORMAN MACLEOD. By John Wellwood.
- SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor Saintsbury.
- KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By Louis A. Barbé.
- ROBERT FERGUSSON. By A. B. Grosart.
- JAMES THOMSON. By William Bayne.
- MUNGO PARK. By T. Banks Maclachlan.
- DAVID HUME. By Professor Calderwood.
- THOMAS REID. By Professor Campbell Fraser.
THOMAS
REID
BY
A:CAMPBELL
FRASER ::
FAMOUS
SCOTS:
SERIES
PUBLISHED BY
OLIPHANT ANDERSON
& FERRIER · EDINBVRGH
AND LONDON
The designs and ornaments of thisvolume are by Mr. Joseph Brown,and the printing from the press ofMessrs. T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh.
PREFACE
This little book is an attempt to present Reid in a freshlight, and in his relations to present-day thought. It dealswith the Scottish chapter in that enduring alternation betweenagnostic despair and endeavour after perfect insightwhich seems to be a law of the philosophic progress ofmankind. Thomas Reid, home-bred and self-contained,is the national representative, in the eighteenth century, ofthe via media between these extremes. In the concludingchapter I have looked at the philosophical appeal to inspireddata of Common Sense, in the wider light of the theisticphilosophy of the universe, and not merely as part of aninductive science of the human mind. This connects thetheistic postulate of spiritual reason, as the foundation ofhuman experience, with Reid’s appeal to the ultimate butoften dormant necessities of human nature, a subjecttreated mo