The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Reid - Inquiry into the Human Mind
This volume differs from the rest of the series to which it belongs, in not being a presentation of the views of its author "in extracts," but simply an edition of one of his works. That Reid deserves a place in a "Series of Modern Philosophers" will hardly be questioned in Britain or America, nor will the wisdom of the editor's choice of the Inquiry as Reid's characteristic and most stimulating work be doubted. As an easy introduction to philosophical speculation, this treatise is specially valuable, while the large proportion of its space devoted to psychology gives it a certain scientific utility. In addition to Reid's text, the most important of Hamilton's notes are retained, as well as an abridgment of his index. The editor's own contribution to the volume consists of a brief biographical sketch, a good bibliography, and an introduction in two chapters, dealing respectively with "the relation of Reid's philosophy to its philosophical antecedents," and with "the influence of Reid's philosophy upon subsequent philosophic thought."
It is extremely difficult to characterize a philosophical standpoint or system in its historical "setting," within such narrow limits as those to which Dr. Sneath has confined himself in this introduction (fifty pages). Reid's philosophy is, both on its critical and constructive sides an epistemology, and, more specifically, a theory of perception. Negatively, it is an "answer to Hume," and takes the form of a reconsideration of the "ideal theory " inherited by Hume from his predecessors. The development of this theory, accordingly, is first traced, and clearly enough, considering the brevity of Dr. Sneath's sketches. Perhaps the account of Hume is least successful. The leading distinction between "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" is not brought out with sufficient clearness or emphasis, and throughout this part Dr. Sneath would have done better to follow, more closely the lines of Hume's own exposition. In such a sketch of the development of philosophy prior to Hume, it would also have been well to indicate the existence and operation, implicitly at least, of Reid's own principle of "Common Sense," in the "Judgment" of Locke's Fourth Book and the "Reflection" of his Second, as well as in the "Notion" and "Suggestion" of Berkeley's Principles and the "Idea" of his Siris.
Dr. Sneath considers at some length the legitimacy of Hamilton's interpretation of Reid's Natural Realism. The real difficulty of the question arises, I think, from the fact that Hamilton's constant problem of the mediate or immediate character of Perception was not Reid's main problem at all, and that by insisting upon reading his own problem into the philosophy of Reid, Hamilton has helped to hinder the true understanding of the latter. Reid's béte noire, like Kant's, was the Sensationalism or psychological "atomism" of Locke and his successors, their doctrine of the "loose," separate, or "simple" idea, and the instrument of its destruction was his own central principle of "natural suggestion" or "common sense." It is here that we discover the real merit and originality of Reid's philosophy, and recognize his kinship with Kant himself. The space devoted by Dr. Sneath to the Hamiltonian discussion might with advantage have been given to the exposition of this, the characteristic and important side of Reid's epistemology.
The second chapter of the introduction traces the subsequent fortunes of Reid's philosophy in Britain, France, and America. Special prominence is here again given to Hamilton, whom the editor styles "the ablest exponent and special defender of the Scottish realism," an "appreciation" which, after Mill's Examination and Dr. Stirling's Hamilton and the Philosophy of Perception, is a little unguarded. No mention is made of the important and interesting development of Reid's principle by Professor Campbell Fraser, in his insistence upon the ultimate philosophical necessity of a faith which, if unreasoned or only in part reasoned out to logical coherence, is, none the less, of the essence of reason.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1925, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 98 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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