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. [Illustration: THOMAS REID BY A:CAMPBELL FRASER :: FAMOUS SCOTS: SERIES PUBLISHED BY OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER · EDINBVRGH AND LONDON ] The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and the printing from the press of Messrs. T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh. PREFACE This little book is an attempt to present Reid in a fresh light, and in his relations to present-day thought. It deals with the Scottish chapter in that enduring alternation between agnostic despair and endeavour after perfect insight which seems to be a law of the philosophic progress of mankind. Thomas Reid, home-bred and self-contained, is the national representative, in the eighteenth century, of the _via media_ between these extremes. In the concluding chapter I have looked at the philosophical appeal to inspired data of Common Sense, in the wider light of the theistic philosophy of the universe, and not merely as part of an inductive science of the human mind. This connects the theistic postulate of spiritual reason, as the foundation of human experience, with Reid’s appeal to the ultimate but often dormant necessities of human nature, a subject treated more fully in my _Philosophy of Theism_ (1896). For valuable unpublished material—more indeed than I could avail myself of within narrow limits—I am indebted to Miss Hilda Paterson, the guardian of manuscript remains and other relics of her ancestor, preserved at Birkwood, in Reid’s native country of the Dee. I also owe much to Mr. R. S. Rait, now of New College, Oxford, the historian of the Universities of Aberdeen, whose research has done much to illustrate his _alma mater_ in the North. And I am indebted to Dr. Davidson, the Professor of Logic, and to Mr. Anderson, the Librarian, of the University of Aberdeen, for documents to which the space at my disposal forbids more than an occasional reference.