The following Questions for debate were proposed by Reid during the six years of his membership:—1758, 13th and 26th July, ‘Are the Objects of the Human Mind properly divided into Impressions and Ideas; and must every Idea be a copy of a preceding Impression?’ This closely touches the fundamental assumption of the sceptical philosophy. Those which follow suggest a disposition to ethical and social discussion. 12th June 1759, ‘Whether Mankind with regard to Morals always was and is the same?’ 1st April 1760, ‘Whether it is proper to educate Children without instilling Principles into them of any kind whatever?’ (Beattie’s celebrated experiment in the education of his son may be connected with this.) 15th April 1761, ‘Whether Moral Character consists in Affections in which the Will is not concerned, or in fixed, habitual, and constant Purposes?’ 8th January 1762, ‘Whether by the encouragement of proper Laws the Number of Births in Great Britain might be nearly doubled, or at least greatly increased?’ Here we have a sort of inverted Malthusianism suggested. 22nd November 1763, ‘Whether every Action deserving Moral Approbation must be done from a persuasion of its being morally good?’ Beattie, in one of his letters to Sir W. Forbes, thus refers to the Society and to his own philosophical relation to Reid:— ‘I have of late been much engaged in metaphysics; at least, I have been labouring with all my might to overturn that visionary science. I am a member of a club in this town who style themselves the Philosophical Society. I hope you will not think the worse of this Society when I tell you, that to it the world is indebted for a _Comparative View of the Faculties of Man_, and an _Inquiry into Human Nature on the Principles of Common Sense_. I have shown that all genuine reasoning does ultimately terminate in principles which it is impossible to disbelieve, and as impossible to prove; that, therefore, the ultimate standard of truth to us is Common Sense, or that instinctive conviction into which all true reasoning does resolve itself; that therefore what contradicts Common Sense is in itself absurd, however subtle the arguments which support it. My principles in the main are not essentially different from Dr. Reid’s; but they seem to offer a more compendious method of destroying scepticism. I intend to show (and have already in part shown) that all sophistical reasoning is marked by certain characters which distinguish it from true investigation; and thus I flatter myself I shall be able to discover a method of detecting sophistry, even when one is not able to give a logical confutation of its arguments.’ Beattie argued more in the temper of a partisan than Reid, who criticised Hume in the spirit of a free and candid inquirer after truth. On the 18th of January 1762 the honorary Doctorate of Divinity was conferred on Reid by Marischal College.