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Reid, Dr. David Gregory obtained him easy access to the house 

 x -Y-' of Martin Folkes, the President of the Royal Society, 

 where he met with many eminent individuals. At Cam- 

 bridge he became acquainted with Dr. Bentley, and 

 he had frequent communications with Saunderson, the 

 blind Mathematician. 



Our author had scarcely returned from 1 this interest- 

 ing tour, when the King's College of Aberdeen pre- 

 sented him, in 1737, to the church of New Machar. 

 His ordination to this charge, however, was attended 

 with very unpleasant circumstances. On account of 

 the hostility which then prevailed against the law of 

 patronage, his admission met with the most violent op- 

 position, and he was even personally exposed to danger. 

 These irritated feelings were soon subdued. His exem- 

 plary discharge of the duties of a Christian pastor, his 

 active benevolence, and his forbearing and conciliatory 

 temper, subdued the temporary prejudices of his peo- 

 ple, and united him to his parish by those ties which 

 it is painful to see so often severed. This mutual at- 

 tachment between him and his parishioners was greatly 

 strengthened by his marriage, in 1740, to his cousin 

 Elizabeth, (daughter of Dr. George Reid, physician in 

 London,) whose kindness and active charity to the sick 

 and the poor were long held in affectionate remem- 

 brance. 



Although Mr. Reid had, during his philosophical 

 and theological studies at the university, begun that 

 train of metaphysical inquiries in which he afterwards 

 acquired such distinguished eminence, yet it was in 

 the peaceful seclusion of a clerical life that he found 

 leisure to devote to these abstract pursuits the whole 

 vigour of his faculties. The recreations of gardening 

 and of botany seemed to relieve his mind from the in- 

 tensity of its application, and it was by a judicious 

 combination of deep study with superficial amusements, 

 that he was able to pursue, without interruption, those 

 trains of abstract thought which were necessary in 

 studying the laws of external perception, and those 

 principles which constitute the basis of human know- 

 ledge. 



In the year 1748, Mr. Reid published, in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions of that year, his Essay on Quan- 

 tity, occasioned by reading a Treatise, in which simple 

 and compound ratios are applied to virtue and merit. 

 The treatise here referred to was Dr. Hutcheson's En- 

 quiry into the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. 

 Dr. Reid's essay met with general admiration, and de- 

 serves to be perused by those who are disposed to em- 

 ploy mathematics in inquiries which afford no data for 

 their application. 



The reputation which Mr. Reid acquired by this es- 

 say, and the high attainments which his friends knew 

 he had made in ethical inquiries, induced the profes- 

 sors of King's College, Aberdeen, to appoint him to the 

 chair of moral philosophy, which had become vacant 

 in 1752. The plan of his course comprehended mathe- 

 matics, physics, logic and ethics ; and for tracing these 

 various branches of knowledge, no man was better qua- 

 lified than Mr. Reid. 



Mr. Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, which ap- 

 peared in 1739> had attracted the particular notice of 

 Mr. Reid. From a superficial view of the subject, he 

 was disposed at first to admit the principles of Mr. 

 Hume's reasoning ; but when a more minute inquiry 

 had displayed to him the consequences of these views, 

 he was led to suspect their accuracy, and ultimately to 

 renounce them as unfounded. In this way our author 

 was led to compose An Inquiry into the Human Mind 



on the principles of common sense. The object of this Reid . 

 work, which appeared in 1764, was to refute the opi- s ""Y 

 nions of Locke and Hartley respecting the connexion 

 which they supposed to exist between the phenomena, 

 powers, and operations of the mind, and to found hu- 

 man knowledge on a system of instinctive principles. 

 The opinion which was entertained of this work was 

 in the highest degree favourable, and even among those 

 who were most inclined to dissent from its canons. His 

 fellow professors favoured him, on the occasion, with 

 the degree of doctor in divinity, and he was invited by 

 the professors of the university of Glasgow to fill the 

 vacant chair of moral philosophy. Mr. Hume, to 

 whom the Inquiry was sent, appears to have en- 

 tertained, or rather to have expressed, different opi- 

 nions of its merit. In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Hugh 

 Blair, not written with his usual good taste, he remarks, 

 " I wish that the parsons would confine themselves to 

 their old occupation of worrying one another, and leave 

 philosophers to argue with temper, moderation, and 

 good manners." Whereas, in a letter to Dr. Reid him- 

 self, he observes, " By Dr. Blair's means I have been 

 favoured with the perusal of your performance, which 

 I have read with great pleasure and attention. It is 

 certainly very rare that a piece so deeply philosophical 

 is wrote with so much spirit, and affords so much en- 

 tertainment to the reader ; though 1 must still regret 

 the disadvantages under which I read it, as I never 

 had the whole performance at once before me, and 

 could not be able fully to compare one part with ano- 

 ther. To this reason chiefly I ascribe some obscurities 

 which, in spite of your short analysis or abstract, still 

 seem to hang over your system. For I must do you 

 the justice to own, that when I enter into your ideas, 

 no man appears to express himself with greater perspi- 

 cuity than you do ; a talent which, above all others, is 

 requisite in that species of literature which you have 

 cultivated. As I was desirous to be of some use to 

 you, I kept a watchful eye all along over your style ; but 

 it is really so correct, and so good English, that I found 

 not any thing worth the remarking. There is only one 

 passage in this chapter where you make use of the 

 phrase hinder to do, instead of hinder from doing, which 

 is the English one ; but I could not find the passage 

 when I sought for it. You may judge how unexcep- 

 tionable the whole appeared to me, when I could re- 

 mark so small a blemish." 



The invitation which our author received from Glas- 

 gow was too flattering to be refused. Though much 

 attached to his colleagues in Aberdeen, yet the prospect 

 of enjoying the society of Black, Simson, Leechman, 

 the two Wilsons, and Millar, and other advantages 

 which a chair in that university presented, induced hinv 

 to accept of the appointment. 



In the year 1773, Dr. Reid published, in the third 

 volume of Lord Kames' Sketches of the History of Man, 

 in the form of an appendix, " A Brief Account of Aris- 

 totle's Logic, with Remarks by Dr. Reid," which has 

 been deemed, by very competent judges, an admirable 

 and perspicuous analysis of the Aristotelian philosophy. 

 " In attempting," he himself remarks, " to give some 

 account of the analytics and of the topics of Aristotle, 

 ingenuity (ingenuousness) obliges me to confess, that 

 though I have often proposed to read the whole with 

 care, and to understand what is intelligible, yet my 

 courage and patience always failed before I had done. 

 Why should I throw away so much time and painful 

 attention upon a thing of so little use ? If I had lived 

 in those ages when a knowledge of Aristotle's Organon 



