25, 1767)." For my part, if I could find a machine as proper for analyzing ideas, moral sentiments, and other materials belonging to the Fourth Kingdom, I believe Ishould find in my heart to bestow the money for it.I have the more use for a machine of this kind, because my alembic for performing these operations -- I mean my cranium-has been a little out of order this winter by vertigo, which has made my studies go on heavily, though it has not hitherto interrupted my teaching."Thus flowed along, quietly and honorably, the remaining days of Dr.Reid.He corresponded with Lord Kames and Dr.
James Gregory on such subjects as liberty, cause, motives, and volition.The letters have been published.Many of them are controversial, but they are conducted in an admirable spirit.He wrote a number of papers of some value, apparently for the literary society of Glasgow.In particular, be has " Some Observations on the Modern System of Materialism," meaning by Materialism that advanced by Dr.
Priestley in his " Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit" (1777), and "A free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism and Philosophical Necessity" (1777).This paper appears in no fewer than five forms, showing what pain she had taken with it.One or two of the forms look like mere notes or preparations, the other three are fully written out.It is of a thorough and searching character, distinguished for acuteness beyond almost any of his published writings, and written with great point and <naivete>.He {207} also wrote " Miscellaneous Reflections on Priestley's Account of Hartley's "Theory of the Human Mind." He speaks with great fondness and respect of Hartley, but shows that his doctrines were unfounded hypotheses.He is severe upon Priestley's application of Hartley's theories, and examines the attempt to explain the memory, and the mental faculties generally, and the passions and volitions, by association. But the principal work of his declining life consisted in writing his " Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man," published in 1785, and the "Essays on the Active Powers," which appeared in 1788.
Underneath the calm, unpretentious demeanor, there was a deep fountain of devout feeling ready to burst out on certain occasions.Again we are told that, in dispensing the sacrament of the Lord's supper, he could not refer to the love of Christ without tears running down his eyes. In the autumn Of 1796, he had repeated strokes of palsy, and he died Oct.7th.His daughter Mrs.Carmichael writes: " His piety and resignation never forsook him in times of deepest affliction, and in all his distress during his last illness.
Such is the blessed effect of the power of religion, and of a conscience void of offence towards God and man."
Turning now to the philosophy of Reid, we find it distinguished throughout by independence of thought and a love of truth.He admires the genius of those who were rulers in the world of speculation in his time, but he does not follow them.He might have been inclined to do so, but he was staggered by the consequences which had been drawn by Hume; and this led him to review the philosophy that prevailed in his time, and which claimed as its authors the illustrious names of Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley.The consequence is, that his works, though expository throughout, have all along a polemical front, but always bearing a calm, a polite, and benignant aspect.We cannot understand his philosophy, and we cannot appreciate his originality, unless we bear this circumstance in mind, which, I may add, we are not likely to forget, as he is constantly referring to some one or other of these authors.
He claims {208} credit in regard to two points, gone in examining and under mining the ideal theory of sense-perception, the other in establishing the doctrine of common sense.These are the topics on which I mean chiefly to dwell in the exposition and criticism of his two works.
His "Inquiry" is occupied almost exclusively with the senses.It is one of the excellencies of his philosophy as compared with those that have gone before, and most of those that have appeared since his time, that he so carefully inquired into these original inlets of knowledge.In doing so, he shows that be is acquainted with all that had been done in physiology down to his time, and that he had been in the way of making original observations.He goes over the senses one by one, beginning with the simpler, smelling and tasting; and going on to the more complex, hearing, touch, and seeing.Under smelling he announces a number of general principles applicable to all the senses, as in regard to sensation considered absolutely, and the nature of judgment and belief.Under hearing he speaks of natural language; and under touch, of natural signs and primary qualities.He dilates at greatest length on sight: discussing such topics as color, visible figure, extension, the parallel motion of the eyes, squinting, and Berkeley's theory of vision.He treats them physiologically, so far as physiology could then carry him; but he treats them also, which so many later German and British psychologists do not, in the light of the revelations of consciousness.He takes up the same subject in the earlier parts of his " Essays."" All philosophers, from Plato to Hume, agree in this that we do not perceive external objects immediately, and that the immediate object of perception must be some image present to the mind." He shows that no solid proof has been advanced of the existence of the ideas; that they are a mere fiction and hypothesis, contrived to solve the phenomena of the human understanding; that they do not at all answer this end; and that this hypothesis of ideas or images of things, in the mind or in the sensorium, is the parent of foolish paradoxes.
