in universally necessitating dialectical Reason, in this Scoto-German way of resisting the agnostic. To fill the place of the 'unknown and unknowable God' of the Hamiltonian emphasis, human knowledge appears identified and co-extensive with the Divine, in an absolute idealism, presumed to be the only adequate refutation of all subverting doubt. The 'raison impuissante,' sustained by and culminating in 'la nature,' or inspired common sense, is exchanged for what looks like a pantheistic necessity that leaves no room for moral agency in man or God, and which scorns the incomplete knowledge that cannot dispense with a faith venture at its root.
Yet Reid, if he were now among us, might find the common sense not superseded but idealised, in the more articulate response of reason in man to the all-pervading active Reason which the later philosopher identifies with his own. That the common sense latent in man is the inspiration of God is an assumption with which he started in his Inquiry. 'The inspiration of the Almighty giveth man understanding.' 'The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.' So the common sense moral trust in God, or universal moral venture, is at the root of all human life and human knowledge, giving unity and vitality to the whole. It is the 'little light'—a ray from the perfect divine light,—and the universe is interpretable for all human purposes only in and through it. It is that in each of us through which the inspirations in the ideal man, when dormant in individuals, can nevertheless be made to respond, in an ethical or religious common sense of the infinite love and mercy of the all-sustaining Power that is always waiting to be gracious—to respond to the inspirations of Hebrew prophets and Christian apostles.
