Gregory of Kinnairdie in Banffshire, sister of the Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford (well known as the friend of Newton), and of the mathematical professors in Edinburgh and St Andrews, by whom the Newtonian philosophy was introduced into the Scottish universities. Thomas Reid was educated in the manse of Strachan, in the neighbouring parish school of Kincardine O'Neil, and in the Marischal college of Aberdeen, which last he entered in 1722, at the age of twelve. Patient industry more than brilliant intelligence marked these early years; and, with a true insight into his character, the parish schoolmaster is said to have predicted that "he would turn out to be a man of good and well-wearing parts." At Marischal college his philosophical master, for the term of three years, was Dr. George Turnbull, author, among other books, of an ethical treatise published in 1740, which professes to apply the inductive theory to researches in human nature; and whose prelections may thus have suggested the method afterwards adopted by his celebrated pupil. Reid took his master's degree in 1726, and devoted the following years to the usual course of theological study. Like his contemporary Kant, he studied for the church, and, unlike Kant, he had the experience of many years in the duties of a country pastor. After a few years' residence in his university in the capacity of librarian, and a year of wandering among men of letters and science in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, he was presented in 1737, by the King's college of Aberdeen, to the neighbouring parish of New Machar, in which the fifteen following years of his life were spent. Here he settled in marriage, and the example of his well-ordered domestic life gradually multiplied itself, by sympathy, in a neighbourhood where he at first encountered violent opposition, through aversion to the law of patronage, but in which his useful ministry so conquered popular prejudice that his departure was the occasion of universal sorrow. Thomas Reid, in the rural parish of New Machar, was unknown to the great world of thought and letters, but his time there, we are informed, "was spent in the most intense study; more particularly in a careful examination of the laws of external perception, and of the other principles which form the groundwork of human knowledge." It was in one of the first years of Reid's ministry at New Machar that Hume's Treatise of Human Nature was given to the world, and the country pastor was induced by its paradoxes, as he tells us, to "call in question the principles commonly received with regard to the human understanding," from which the sceptical consequences of Hume were drawn. Some of his intellectual pursuits at this time are disclosed in his first publication, a paper in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London for 1748, entitled an "Essay on Quantity," which was occasioned by reading the work of Dr. Hutcheson of Glasgow, in which simple and compound ratios are applied to virtue and merit. Reid, like Descartes and Kant, was distinguished in the early part of his life by affinity for mathematical studies, which in both was gradually supplanted by devotion to metaphysical and moral speculation. This brief "Essay on Quantity," published in his thirty-eighth year, indicates the period of transition. Like Locke, Kant, and many other metaphysicians, his intellectual development was slow, and this tract was his only contribution to literature till he was nearly sixty. In 1752 Reid exchanged the manse of New Machar for the chair of philosophy in King's college, Aberdeen. His academical course of instruction, according to the usage of those days, embraced mathematics and physics, as well as mental and moral philosophy—the academical division of labour in the Faculty of Arts not being then practised in King's college. At Aberdeen he engaged with his characteristic patient energy in academical and other literary labour. He was an active adviser among his colleagues in academical reform. An extension of the college session from five to seven months, the elevation of the humanity or Latin class, and the union of some of the smaller bursaries, are mentioned among his achievements in this department. The extended session, however, after trial of a few years, was abandoned, as unsuited to the circumstances of very many Scottish students. At Aberdeen, Reid was a founder of a literary society or club, which met weekly during several years, and proved a powerful auxiliary in the development and expression of that love for letters and philosophy which distinguished Aberdeenshire in the middle and towards the end of last century. "The number of valuable works," says Mr. Stewart, "which issued nearly about the same time from individuals connected with this institution, more particularly the writings of Reid, Gregory, Campbell, Beattie, and Gerard, furnish the best panegyric on the enlightened views of those under whose direction it was originally formed." One of these works was the first elaborate publication of Dr. Reid—the "Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense," published in 1764, in which he presents the fruits of many years of patient thought, ripened by intercourse with his philosophical associates at Aberdeen. The publication of the "Inquiry" was his first public act, in vindication of the common reason of men against the subtile scepticism of David Hume. "For my own satisfaction," he tells us, with reference to the "Inquiry," "I entered into a serious examination of the principles upon which this sceptical system is built, and was not a little surprised to find that it leans with its whole weight upon the received hypothesis that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it; that we do not really perceive things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and ideas. If this be true, supposing certain ideas and impressions to exist in my mind, I cannot, from their existence, infer the existence of anything else; my impressions and ideas are the only existences of which I can have any knowledge or conception; and they are such fleeting and transitory beings that they can have no existence at all, any longer than I am conscious of them. . . . I thought it unreasonable, upon the authority of philosophers, to admit a hypothesis which, in my opinion, overturns all philosophy, all religion and virtue, and all common sense; and finding that all the systems concerning the human understanding which I was acquainted with, were built upon this hypothesis. I resolved to inquire into this subject anew, without regard to any hypothesis." The "Inquiry" contains the fruit of this investigation into the groundwork of our knowledge, so far only as regards the five external senses. It attracted general attention, and Reid was immediately appointed to the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Glasgow, vacant in 1764 by the resignation of Adam Smith, and which had previously been occupied by Hutcheson and Carmichael. Associated with distinguished colleagues, Glasgow was the scene of the thirty-two years of his life which remained. Of these nearly twenty were devoted to the public duties of his professorship, and the others to the preparation, in comparative retirement, of those philosophical works which contain the summary of his metaphysical and ethical doctrine. Dugald Stewart, his biographer, and successor as the representative of the higher philosophy in Scotland, was one of his pupils at Glasgow in 1772. Reid's only publication while he was engaged in the public duties of his Glasgow chair, was a brief account of the Logic of Aristotle, which appeared originally in 1774, in the form of an appendix to his friend Lord Kames' Sketches of the History of Man. In this tract he describes the contents of the several treatises of the Organon. While its defects illustrate the comparatively low state of Aristotelian criticism in Scotland ninety years ago, it is interesting as one of the few works bearing on Formal Logic given to the world by Scottish philosophy, previously to Sir W. Hamilton. The two most comprehensive of all Reid's philosophical works, appeared in the period of literary leisure which he had reserved for the closing years of his life—his "Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man," and his "Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind." The first named of these works was published in 1785, and contains a summary of what he taught in mental or metaphysical philosophy, including the theory of external perception in particular, and of common sense or the first principles of knowledge and belief in general, along with his criticisms of the hypothesis of ideal or representative knowledge in various forms which it had assumed. The "Essays on the Active Powers" followed in 1788, containing a survey of the general field of ethics, including an analysis of the mechanical, animal, and rational principles of action, and discussions on the theories of free will and moral approbation. Reid's last contribution to literature, which was prepared only a year or two before his death (probably in 1794), was a historical account of the university of Glasgow, containing evidence of his accurate knowledge of the theory and gradual development of the academical institutions of Europe, and prepared, "in name of the principal and professors of the university," for Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland. The various works of Reid enumerated above, together with some valuable letters written by the philosopher, during his residence in Glasgow, to Drs. Andrew and David Skene of
