you for the pains you have taken.' He refers in another letter to what he regards as the source of the fashionable agnosticism against which his life was a continued philosophical protest:—'I have often thought of what you propose—to give a History of the Ideal System and what I have to say against it, by itself; and I am far from being satisfied that it stands in the most proper place [in the Essays]. I have endeavoured to put it in separate chapters [e.g. Essay ii. ch. 7-15], whose titles may direct those who have no taste for it to pass over them. I observe that Bayle and others, who at the reformation of Natural Philosophy gave new light, found it necessary to contrast their own discoveries with the Aristotelian notions which then prevailed. We may now wish their works purged of this controversial part; but perhaps it was necessary at the time they wrote, when men’s minds were full of the old system, and prepossessed in its favour. What I take to be the genuine Philosophy of the Human Mind is in so low a state, and has so many enemies, that I apprehend those who would make any improvement in it must, for some time at least, build with one hand, and hold a weapon with the other.' So Reid claimed the office of modern reformer of the philosophy of human mind, as Bacon and others had been the reformers of the sciences which interpret external nature.
On 'March 14, 1784,' he mentions the progress of the book:—'I send you now the remainder of what I propose to print with respect to the Intellectual Powers of the Mind. It may perhaps be a year before what relates to the Active Powers be ready; and therefore I think the former might be published by itself, as it is very uncertain whether I shall live to publish the latter. I think the title may be
