PHILOSOPHICAL RETIREMENT: AUTHORSHIP IN OLD AGE
1780-1795
Dugald Stewart, when illustrating the changes in human memory that
are connected with disease and old age, refers thus to Reid:—‘One old
man I have myself had the good fortune to know, who, after a long, an
active, and an honourable life, having begun to feel some of the usual
effects of advanced years, has been able to find resources in his own
sagacity against most of the inconveniences with which they are commonly
attended; and who, by watching his gradual decline with the courage
of an indifferent observer, and employing his ingenuity to retard its
progress, has converted even the infirmities of old age into a source of
philosophical amusement.’ For sixteen years Reid had been discharging
that part of the duties of a professor which belongs to the class-room:
the remaining sixteen years of his life, devoted to original research
and authorship, illustrate the words of Stewart. He continued, after the
appointment of Arthur, to live as before in the Professors’ Court in
old Glasgow College—a placid, methodical life, steadily industrious, a
sagacious interpreter of nature and of man, still active in the academic
senate—with occasional recreation in visits to the country. The year 1780
was saddened by another of those domestic sorrows which formed the chief
interruption to the tranquil happiness of his life; for his eldest son,
George, died in Newfoundland in February, at the age of twenty-five.
Two years later the only remaining son, David, was taken away; after
which his daughter, Mrs. Carmichael, alone survived of the nine sons and
daughters.
Very soon after he had been released from the public work of the
professorship, letters to his cousin, Dr. James Gregory, then an
Edinburgh Professor of Medicine, speak of activity in transforming the
lectures into the form of philosophical essays for publication. This
enterprise was indeed Reid’s principal employment for the next eight
years. The _Essays_ appeared in two instalments, in 1785 and 1788. The
first instalment was a matter-of-fact inquiry into the intellectual power
of man; the second was a matter-of-fact inquiry into man’s moral power:
the ‘facts’ inquired about and appealed to were the invisible ones of
which men are conscious, not those that can be seen and touched—above
all, the final convictions of which the Common Sense consists. Both
instalments appeared in the same decade of last century in which Kant’s
‘_Kritiks_’ of Pure and Practical Reason were given to the world.
Reid’s _Essays_ form, as it were, the inner court of the temple of which
the Aberdonian _Inquiry_ is the vestibule. But the vestibule is a more
finished work of constructive skill than the inner court, for the aged
architect appears at last as if embarrassed by accumulated material. The
_Essays_, greater in bulk, perhaps less deserve a place among modern
philosophical classics than the _Inquiry_, notwithstanding its narrower
scope, confined as it is to man’s perception of the extended world, as
an object-lesson in the method of appeal to the common sense. In the
_Essays_ an advance is made towards a finally ethical interpretation of
man and the universe.
We have no longer the light of letters to Lord Kames in this closing
stage of Reid’s life; for Kames died in 1782. Reid’s retiring
modesty deprived him of that large literary intercourse to which his
philosophical position might otherwise have led. His correspondence
with men eminent in letters or philosophy seems almost confined to
Kames, the Gregories, Dugald Stewart, and Dr. Price. I find no trace of
correspondence with his Aberdeen friends Campbell and Beattie, whose
pursuits had so much in common with his own. But letters to Dr. James
Gregory take the place in the ‘eighties’ which those to Lord Kames
took in the ‘seventies’; they reveal an old age given to proof-sheets,
scientific experiments, and benignant interest in social progress. One
dated ‘Glasgow College, April 7, 1783,’ tells of the _Essays on the
Intellectual Powers_ in the press:—‘I shall be much obliged if you will
continue to favour me with your observations; therefore I have put
off examining those you have sent until the manuscripts be returned,
which I expect about the end of this month, along with Dugald Stewart’s
observations.’ Again he writes in June:—‘I cannot get more copied of my
papers till next winter, and indeed have not much more ready. This parcel
goes to page 658. I believe what you have got before may be one-half
of all I intend. The materials of what is not yet ready for the copier
are partly discourses read in our Literary Society, partly notes of my
lectures. Your judgment of what you have seen flatters me very much,
and adds greatly to my own opinion of it; though authors seldom are
deficient in a good opinion of their works. I am at a loss to express my
obligations to you for the pains you have taken.’ He refers in another
letter to what he regards as the source of the fashionable agnosticism
against which his life was a continued philosophical protest:—‘I have
often thought of what you propose—to give a History of the Ideal System
and what I have to say against it, _by itself_; and I am far from being
satisfied that it stands in the most proper place [in the _Essays_]. I
have endeavoured to put it in separate chapters [_e.g._ Essay ii. ch.
7-15], whose titles may direct those who have no taste for it to pass
over them. I observe that Bayle and others, who at the reformation of
Natural Philosophy gave new light, found it necessary to contrast their
own discoveries with the Aristotelian notions which then prevailed. We
may now wish their works purged of this controversial part; but perhaps
it was necessary at the time they wrote, when men’s minds were full of
the old system, and prepossessed in its favour. What I take to be the
genuine Philosophy of the Human Mind is in so low a state, and has so
many enemies, that I apprehend those who would make any improvement in
it must, for some time at least, build with one hand, and hold a weapon
with the other.’ So Reid claimed the office of modern reformer of the
philosophy of human mind, as Bacon and others had been the reformers of
the sciences which interpret external nature.
On ‘March 14, 1784,’ he mentions the progress of the book:—‘I send
you now the remainder of what I propose to print with respect to the
Intellectual Powers of the Mind. It may perhaps be a year before what
relates to the Active Powers be ready; and therefore I think the former
might be published by itself, as it is very uncertain whether I shall
live to publish the latter. I think the title may be _Essays on the
Intellectual Powers of the Human Mind_. It will easily divide into eight
Essays; but with regard to this, as well as whether the two parts may
be published separately, I wish to have your advice and Mr. Stewart’s.
I apprehend that the Second Part—I mean what relates to the Active
Powers—will not be near so large as the First.’ On ‘2nd May 1785’ he
announces that the _Essays on the Intellectual Powers_ are ready for
publication, dedicated to Dr. Gregory and to Dugald Stewart:—‘I send you
enclosed what I propose as the title of my _Essays_, with an Epistle
which I hope you and Mr. Stewart will allow me to prefix to them. Whether
your name should go first, on account of your doctor’s degree, or Mr.
Stewart’s, I leave you to adjust between yourselves. I know not how to
express my obligations to you both, for the aid you have given me.’
The book thus ushered into the world in 1785 treats of those constituents
of the common sense that are implied, not only in perception of things
through the five senses and memory, but also in imagination and in the
experimental sciences that deal with the past, the distant, and the
future. One of them contains the rudiments of a criticism of the common
sense principles that finally regulate all abstract reasonings, and
above all, those that determine our judgments of truths contingent upon
Will—human and divine; in all of which what philosophers called ‘ideas’
seemed to him to spoil the genuine common sense and its inspirations.
The fifth Essay deals with the office and relations of our abstract
conceptions. Of this Essay Schopenhauer remarks that ‘the best and most
intelligent exposition of the nature and essence of conceptions which
I have been able anywhere to find is in Thomas Reid’s _Essays on the
Powers of the Human Mind_. This was afterwards condemned by Dugald
Stewart in his _Philosophy of the Human Mind_. Not to waste paper, I
will briefly remark with regard to Stewart, that he belongs to that
large class who have obtained an undeserved reputation through favour
and friends, and therefore I can only advise that not an hour should be
wasted over the scribbling of this shallow writer.’[23] This unworthy
criticism of Stewart is far removed from the calm judgment of Reid.
That our perceptions are not related to their objects as effects are
related to their causes, is insisted on in the _Essays_, in opposition
to Priestley, who treats cognitive acts as the issue of power which
belongs to matter. ‘Men,’ Reid says, ‘have been prone to imagine that,
as bodies are put in motion by some impulse or impression made upon them
by contiguous bodies, so the mind is made to think and perceive by some
impression made upon it by contiguous objects. But to say that an object
which I see with perfect indifference _makes an impression_ upon my mind
is not good English. It is evident from the manner in which this phrase
is used by modern philosophers that they mean, not barely to express by
it my perceiving an object, but to explain the manner of perception. They
think that the object perceived acts upon the mind in some way similar to
that in which one body acts upon another. The impression upon the mind
is conceived to be something wherein the mind is altogether passive.
But this is a hypothesis which contradicts the common sense of mankind.
When I look upon the wall of my room, the wall does not act at all,
nor is capable of acting: the perceiving it is an act or operation in
me.’ In short, the relation between perceptions and their objects is a
unique relation, not to be confounded with the causal, the only causality
involved being the percipient power that is in me.
Those _Essays_ of Reid which treat of the constituents of the common
sense that are implied in the Intellect power of man, appeared in the
early summer of 1785. In September he informed Dr. Gregory of the opinion
of Dr. Price, the most eminent contemporary English metaphysician:—‘I had
a letter from Dr. Price lately, thanking me for a copy of the _Essays_
I ordered to be presented to him; which he has read, and calls a work
of the first value; commends me particularly for treating Dr. Priestley
so gently, who, he says, had been unhappily led to use me ill.’ He then
refers to his own health, which seems to have suffered from the mental
strain, now relieved by the issue of his book:—‘As you are so kind as
to ask me about my distemper, I think it is almost quite gone, so as to
give me no uneasiness. I abstain from fruit and malt liquor, and take a
little port wine, mostly noon and night, not above two bottles a week
when alone. The more I walk or ride, or even talk or read audibly, I am
the better.’
Dr. Beattie writes thus to the Bishop of Chester in October:—
‘Has your lordship read Dr. Reid’s _Essays on the Intellectual
Powers of Man_? Those readers who have been conversant in
the modern philosophy of mind, as it appears in the writings
of Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, will
be much entertained with this work, which does great honour
to the sagacity and patience of the author. It contains the
principles of his _Inquiry_, laid down on a larger scale, and
applied to a greater variety of subjects. Dr. Reid treats his
opponents and their tenets with a respect and a solemnity that
sometimes tempt me to smile. His style is clear and simple; and
his aversion to the word _idea_ is so great, that I think he
never once uses it in delivering his own opinions. It was not
without reason that Stillingfleet took the alarm at Mr. Locke’s
indiscreet use of that word. It was indeed an _ignis fatuus_
that decoyed him in spite of his excellent understanding into a
thousand pits and quagmires. Berkeley it bewildered still more.
And it reduced David Hume to the condition of a certain old
gentleman of whom we read, that—
Fluttering his pinions vain,
Plumb down he dropped, ten thousand fathoms deep.’
Whether our power of conceiving is so far a test of possibility, as that
what is distinctly conceived must be concluded to be possible, and what
cannot be conceived impossible, was a question which interested Reid.
It is discussed in the _Essays on the Intellectual Powers_, and also in
the draft of a letter to Dr. Price, preserved among the manuscripts at
Birkwood; in which it is argued that our power of conception cannot be a
criterion of what is possible. The argument turns much on the meanings of
‘conception,’ ‘possibility,’ and ‘impossibility.’ He thus addresses Dr.
Price:—
‘I would willingly suggest some subject on which I might have
the favour of your thoughts when you have leisure and are
disposed for such correspondence. What occurs to my thoughts
just now is a metaphysical axiom very generally adopted, and,
I think, occasionally adopted by you in your _Review of the
Principal Questions in Morals_—That what we distinctly conceive
is possible. From this axiom D. Hume infers that it is possible
that an universe may start into existence without a cause,
and other like extravagancies. The use he makes of it led me
to consider it a good many years ago, and I have a strong
suspicion that there is some fallacy in it, which has imposed
on men’s understandings, owing to the ambiguity of the word
_conceive_.
‘As to the history of this axiom, I suspect it to have taken
its rise from what Descartes laid down as the criterion
of truth, which he maintained to be clear and distinct
conception. _Quidquid clare et distincte concipio esse verum,
id est verum._ Cudworth seems to have followed him in this,
making the criterion of verity to be clear, self-consistent
intelligibility. Those who came after, judging it difficult to
maintain that everything is _true_ which is clearly conceivable
or intelligible, have maintained that everything that can be
clearly conceived is at least _possible_. This seemed to be the
proper correction of Descartes’ maxim, and it has passed from
one hand to another without strict examination.
‘Whatever is true or false, whatever is possible or impossible,
may be expressed by a proposition. Now, what do we mean when we
say that we conceive a proposition? I think no more is meant,
if we speak properly, than that we understand what is meant by
that proposition. If this be so, it must surely be granted that
we may understand the meaning of a proposition which expresses
what is impossible. He who understands the meaning of this
proposition, “Two and two make four,” must equally understand
the meaning of this other, “Two and two do not make four.”
Both are equally understood; that is, the conception of both
is equally clear; yet the first is necessarily true, and the
second impossible.
‘Perhaps it will be said, that we may not merely conceive the
_meaning_ of a proposition, but we may conceive it to be a
_true_ proposition, and that it is our being able to conceive
it to be true that gives us ground to think it possible. In
answer to this, I beg you would attend very carefully to the
meaning of these words—“Conceiving a proposition to be true.” I
can put no other meaning upon them but judging it to be true,
that is, giving some degree of assent to it. Judgment or assent
admits of various degrees, from the slightest suspicion to the
most deliberate conviction; from the most modest and diffident
assent to the most pertinacious and dogmatical. I conceive
there maybe inhabitants in the moon; that is, my judgment leans
a little that way. I would not use that expression unless the
probability, however small, seemed to be on that side of the
question.
‘If this be the meaning of conceiving a proposition to be true,
then the meaning of the axiom will be, that a proposition
which appears to us to have any degree of probability, however
small, must at least be possible. But the axiom, taken in
this sense, is surely false. It would be superfluous to give
instances of this to a mathematician.
‘If it should be said that conceiving a proposition to be
true means, neither barely to understand the meaning of the
proposition, nor the giving any degree of assent to it, I would
be glad to know what it really does mean. For I am at a loss to
know what power of the understanding we mean by the conceiving
a proposition to be true, if it is neither simple apprehension,
by which we barely understand the meaning of a proposition,
nor judgment, by which we assent to the proposition or dissent
from it. I know of no power of the understanding intermediate
between these two. And if there is none, I think the axiom must
be false.
‘There are many propositions which, by the faculties God has
given us, we perceive to be not only true, but necessarily
true; and the contradictions of these must be impossible. So
that our knowledge of what is impossible keeps pace with our
knowledge of necessary truth.
‘By our senses and our memory, by testimony and other means,
we have the certain knowledge of many truths which we do not
perceive to be necessary; their contraries therefore may be
possible for aught we know. But we know that whatever is true,
whether necessary or not, is possible. Our knowledge therefore
of what is possible keeps pace with our knowledge of truth,
whether contingent or necessary. Beyond this, I am afraid our
knowledge of what is possible is conjectural. And although
we are apt to think everything to be possible which we do
not perceive to be impossible, yet in this we may be greatly
deceived. You know well, sir, that mathematics affords many
instances of impossibilities _in the nature of things_, which
no man would have dreamed of or believed, until they were
discovered by accurate and subtle reasoning. Perhaps if we were
able to reason demonstratively to as great an extent in other
subjects as in mathematics, we might discover many things to
be impossible which we now take to be possible. We are apt
to think it possible that God might have made an universe of
sensible and rational creatures, into which neither natural
nor moral Evil should ever enter. It may be so for what I
know. But how are you certain that this is possible? I can
distinctly conceive it, say you; therefore it is possible. I do
not admit this argument. May not a man who is a mathematician
as distinctly conceive that in the infinite variety of numbers
gradually ascending, there is no ratio whatsoever which is not
equal to the ratio of some one whole number to some other whole
number? Yet the mathematician can demonstrate that there are
innumerable ratios which are not equal to the ratio of some one
number to another. Many mathematicians, taking it for granted
that it was possible to square the circle, have spent their
lives in a fruitless pursuit. May not our taking things to be
possible, in matters of higher moment, when we can show no good
reason that they are so, lead us into unnecessary disputes and
vain theories? Ought we to admit that as a just argument in
reasoning, or even as a pressing difficulty, which is grounded
on the supposition that such a thing is possible, when in
reality we have no good evidence of its being possible, and for
anything we can show to the contrary, it may be impossible?’
A letter to Dr. Gregory in March 1786 shows the _Essays on the Active or
Moral Powers_ in the press:—‘I am proud of the approbation you express of
the _Essays_. I have made some corrections and additions, but such as I
hope will not make it necessary to write the book over again. But I wish,
if I find health and leisure in summer, to add some Essays to go before
that on “Liberty of the Will,” in order to give some further elucidation
of the principles of morals. I expect your remarks and D. Stewart’s on
what is in hand. It will be no inconvenience to wait two, three, or
even four months.’ Two years later, early in 1788, when he was in his
seventy-eighth year, the five _Essays on the Active Powers of Man_ were
published. This was Reid’s last appearance as a philosophical author. The
eight Essays of 1785, and the five Essays of 1788, all relate to human
Power—power immanent or intellectual, and power overtly operative or
moral.
In March, a few weeks after the book appeared, Beattie writes to Sir W.
Forbes:—
‘I have been looking into Dr. Reid’s book on _The Active
Powers of Man_. It is written with his usual perspicuity and
acuteness; is in some parts very entertaining; and to me, who
have been obliged to think much on those subjects, is very
interesting throughout. The question concerning Liberty and
Necessity [of the Will] is very fully discussed, and very ably,
and I think nothing more need be said about it. I could have
wished that he had given a fuller examination of the passions,
and been a little more practical in illustrating the duties of
morality. But his manner in all his writings more turned to
speculative than to practical philosophy; which may be owing
to his having employed himself so much in the study of Locke,
Hume, Berkeley, and other theorists; and partly, no doubt,
to the habits of study and modes of conversation which were
fashionable in this country in his younger days. If I were not
personally acquainted with the Doctor, I should conclude from
his books that he was rather too warm an admirer of Mr. Hume.
He confutes, it is true, some of his opinions; but pays them
much more respect than they are entitled to.’
To Beattie’s less profound intelligence, indignant sentiment was more
acceptable, in defence of fundamental faith, than the calm inquiry and
sympathetic criticism of Reid.
The Literary Society which met monthly in the College was occasionally
a channel for his thoughts through all the years of the Glasgow
professorship, as the more famous ‘Wise Club’ had been at Aberdeen.
Principal Leechman, Black, Moor, Arthur, and Dr. Thomas Hamilton were
also members. Some of Reid’s contributions before 1788 seem to have
been incorporated in the _Essays_. After that he still found vent for
his thoughts in papers for the Society, and in letters to Dr. Gregory,
chiefly about Power and Causation. Among the most important of those
submitted to the Society in his last years, I find ‘Some Observations
on the Modern System of Materialism,’ in which the impotence of matter
is maintained; as also in another, entitled ‘Miscellaneous Reflections
on Priestley’s account of Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind.’ Then we
have ‘Observations on the Utopia of Sir Thomas More.’ A short essay ‘On
Power,’[24] in March 1792, was his last metaphysical performance: it sums
up his conclusions regarding our conception of causation, as regulated by
the Common Sense. ‘Observations on the Danger of Political Innovation,’
suggested by the Revolution in France, were read in the Society on
November 1794.
This last Essay is characteristic. It presses a distinction between two
political attitudes that are apt to be confounded—the one speculative,
dealing with abstractions, treating the facts of the case and history as
irrelevant; the other practical, taking account of the actual conditions,
therefore disposed to modify its ideals by a due regard to what has
been and now is. The first asks what that organisation of society is,
which, abstractly considered, is most favourable to progress: the
other cautiously considers how the inherited political organism may
with least friction be adapted to the changed conditions of the social
evolution. Reid assumes this last as his attitude, arguing that the
British Constitution encourages continuous orderly evolution, not sudden
revolution, and that this is illustrated in its history since 1688.
At first, he had looked with sanguine hope to the French Revolution,
but, like Edmund Burke, who shortly before had been Rector of Glasgow
University, his hope gave place to fear. It is interesting that it was
the _Vindiciæ Gallicæ_ of Sir James Mackintosh that had inspired him with
the hope; for, according to his daughter, Mrs. Carmichael, he was struck
with admiration on reading the book, and used often to speak of it as one
of the most ingenious essays in political philosophy he had ever met with.
Jeremy Bentham as well as Mackintosh was known to Reid by his writings,
as appears in this letter to Dr. Gregory, in September 1788, which refers
to Bentham’s _Defence of Usury_, published the year before:—
‘I am much pleased with the tract you sent me on Usury. I think
the reasoning unanswerable, and have long been of the author’s
opinion, though I suspect that the general principle—that
bargains ought to be left to the judgment of the parties, may
admit of some exceptions; when the buyers are the many, the
poor, the simple, and the sellers few, rich, and cunning.
The former may need the aid of the magistrate to prevent
their being oppressed by the latter. It seems to be upon
this principle that postage, freight, the hire of chairs and
coaches, and the price of bread, are regulated in most great
towns. But with regard to the loan of money in a commercial
state, the exception can have no place—the borrowers and
lenders are upon an equal footing, and each may be left to take
care of his own interest.’
Three years before his death Reid is found preparing the _Account of the
University of Glasgow_, which appeared three years after his death, in
the _Statistical Account of Scotland_ published by Sir John Sinclair. It
was not communicated by him to Sir John, but transmitted by Professor
Jardine, in name of the Principal and Professors, at whose request Reid
seems to have engaged in this work. It was an anonymous publication, but
it has been attributed to him, and it bears internal evidence of his
hand. His colleague, Professor Richardson, in his biographical account
of Professor Arthur, Reid’s successor, published in 1803, mentions that
‘the Statistical Account of the University was all written by Dr. Reid,
except the statements respecting the business of particular classes.’ It
shows intelligence then uncommon in Scotland of the mediæval constitution
of Universities, and appreciation of the true academical ideal. The life
begun at King’s College forty years before in projects of University
reform, was fitly closed by this account of the great western seat of
learning.
Mrs. Reid died early in 1792. His feelings were thus expressed in a
letter to Dugald Stewart:—
‘By the loss of my bosom friend, with whom I lived fifty-two
years, I am brought into a kind of new world, at a time of life
when old habits are not easily forgot, or new ones acquired.
But every world is God’s world, and I am thankful for the
comforts He has left me. Mrs. Carmichael has now the care of
two deaf old men, and does everything in her power to please
them; and both are very sensible of her goodness. I have more
health than at my time of life [82] I had any reason to expect.
I walk about; entertain myself with reading what I soon forget;
I can converse with one person if he articulates distinctly
and within ten inches of my left ear; I go to church without
hearing a word of what is said. You know I had never any
pretensions to vivacity, but I am still free from languor and
_ennui_.’
After this sorrow, his daughter, Mrs. Carmichael, lived much in his house
in the Professors’ Court. She became a widow in the same year, for her
husband died a few months after Mrs. Reid. Elizabeth Leslie, daughter of
his stepsister Margaret, was also an inmate, and added to the comfort of
the closing years. Soon after her father’s death Mrs. Carmichael went to
live at Aberdeen.