Reid

“ Caird, who adorned Reid’s chair for nearly thirty years—methods for making explicit latent Divine Reason as what explains and sustains the universe. Reid's appeal in a practical temper, to the mixed and moral reason in man, as that with which man is inspired—an appeal widened and prolific of deeper questions in Hamilton—was still too cautious to attempt to formulate the mysteries of existence, in fully intelligible principles, which should remove the darkness around the 'little light' with which Reid was satisfied. ”

“ Lord Hadley leaned back in his chair and laughed silently.
"Come, come, Reid, isn't that going a little too far? To make use of a very hackneyed quotation, 'All's fair in love and war,' you know. Between ourselves, you've exactly indicated what I propose doing."
Neil Reid rose to his feet with an angry exclamation and caught up his hat as if about to go, but evidently thought better of it and resumed his seat.
"It's not the slightest use quarrelling about this little matter, Reid," his Lordship remarked affably. "Come, let's drop it now; it's a fair field, and let the best man win. ”

“ Every one at length gone away; everything arranged; the house still and solemn.
His father had left him alone for a little with the dead boy. At last!...
His sorrow, which before the strangers he had kept swallowed down, he need hide no longer. There was no one to hear, no one to see. And he knelt beside the bed and stroked the smooth cold cheek. He kissed the cold mouth and stroked the soft dark hair from which all stain had been washed; and he put his arms about the body. And he remembered the boy as he had stood before him that afternoon in all his wonderful beauty. ”

“ Campbell was nine years younger than Reid, like him an alumnus of Marischal College; he had been minister of Banchory-Ternan for nine years before he was called to Aberdeen. He rivalled Reid himself in analytic power and calm, candid, luminous reasoning. Alexander Gerard, like Reid, a University reformer, and author of essays on ‘Taste’ and on ‘Genius,’ was Professor of Philosophy in Marischal College, and then of Divinity there, and afterwards at King’s. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. Just a week from the day he wrote that letter, Reid, moody and uncertain of temper, came from the cook-tent to the corral one morning to find Artless the blunderer cinching up his saddle on a horse that belonged in Reid’s string; which is, among men of the range, the sin unforgivable. ”

“ It is sad to have to relate that Lieutenant Reid was by no means glad to see his father.
“Why, dad!” he said; “whatever has brought you up to town? and how queer you look and in the name of fortune, what is the matter?”
“I have had the most astounding news,” said the Major. “Let me sit down, I am quite breathless. Michael, where are you going to dine?”
Michael Reid mentioned a fashionable club where he hoped to meet his friend.
“You will not go there; you will stay with me. Send a messenger to Hudson to say you are prevented dining with him this evening.” ”

“ This fervid expression of devotion reveals an intensity of purpose which worked beneath the outwardly placid and discreet life. Mrs. Reid survived this critical illness for nearly half a century.
Much of Reid’s time at New Machar, according to his brother-in-law Mr. Rose, was spent in meditative thought, with an attention to the activities of his own mind of which few men are capable. Traditions of solitary walks immersed in study were long in circulation. He found his chief recreation, we are told, in the manse garden or in botanical observations. His society attracted his neighbours. ”

“ The horseman advanced, guiding his horse at a slow pace, and evidently observing caution as he went. While passing, the moon shone full upon him, and the bright points of his harness and arms were seen sparkling under her light. His fair complexion, too, could be distinguished easily, as also his fine erect figure, and the noble outlines of his horse.
“The güero!” muttered Manuel; “all right, boy Pepe!”
“What’s yon ahead?” inquired the zambo.
“Ha! didn’t notice that. Dam! a dog! dog, sure.”
“It is a dog. Malraya!”
“Devil roast that dog!—heard of him before—splendid dog, boy Pepe. ”

“ As there are too many who make themselves appear more wise than they are, it was the more uncommon fault of Reid to appear less a philosopher than he really was. Extreme caution made him suspicious of ingenious conjecture in matter-of-fact inquiry, and perhaps blinded him to the large part which imagination as well as reason has to play in progress. ‘It is genius, and not the want of it,’ he says, ‘that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error and false theory’ ”

“ Reid broke out, "for God's sake—"
Doctor Paulus never turned his head. "Be still, young man," he said quietly, and Reid's voice died into a stammer as he went steadily on.
"If it was cruel, this way to show you wholly the truth, so we must hurt once not to have to hurt more. But it is better to have the truth now, is it not so? For you have all these that are living, and you will be well again. Oh, there is no miracle; all does not in a moment change. ”

“ Reid was unquestionably one of the profoundest philosophers of the age; and although some who think it a proof of weakness to differ from Mr. Hume have slighted the speculations of Dr. Reid, and undervalued the precision which he laboured to introduce, his Inquiry into the Senses will probably be coeval with our language. It is founded on facts which must continue to interest men while their constition continues unchanged. ”

“ A modern critic may complain that Reid’s point of view is too narrow and special, and his method too matter-of-fact to entitle the result to be called philosophy. It looks unlike philosophy proper, which is concerned with the universe and universals, and is like a special science of human mind, having human mind for its finite object or province, as other special sciences have their limited provinces. ”

“ Reid was smoking a cigarette, his hat pushed back, the shadows of his late discontent cleared out of his face. Below them the sheep were grazing. They were all there; Mackenzie had wit enough in him to see that they were all there.
Reid looked at him with a grin that seemed divided between amusement and scorn.
“I don’t believe you’re cut out for a sheepman, Mackenzie,” he said.
“It begins to look like it,” Mackenzie admitted. He was too sick to inquire into the matter of Reid’s recovery of the sheep; the world tipped at the horizon, as it tips when one is sick at sea. ”

“ In that year, when he was preparing his lectures, he accidentally found a copy of Reid’s Inquiry at a book-stall near the Seine. [149] He was charmed with its contents, which thereafter inspired his teaching. [26] Through Royer Collard, Reid’s philosophy became the dominant philosophy of France, and it still retains an elevating spiritual influence in the national schools. [27] In 1828 Reid’s works were translated and discussed by Jouffroy, a leading thinker in his generation, who thus leavened thinking minds among contemporaries. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Even the long-robed priest of the village passed to and fro amongst them, distributing crosses and benedictions; for all of which the brigands paid him in coin, that had no doubt been taken from the pockets of some unfortunate traveller—perhaps one of his own sacred cloth!
It certainly was a scene of sufficient originality to interest the eyes of a stranger, that stranger an artist; and the young Englishman, as he gazed upon it, for a time forgot that he was a captive. Of this he was reminded as night drew near. Hitherto his captors had not even taken the precaution to tie him. ”

“ In other words, he must be as different as possible from themselves. Mr Reid is entirely different in thought and disposition from ninety-nine out of every hundred of those who listen to him and laugh with him. They are volatile, fickle, amusement-loving ”

“ The notes show that Reid was well abreast of the physical science of his time.
At the time of Reid’s appointment as a regent of philosophy in King’s College, the alternative of regency or professoriate was discussed in the University. He entered readily into this and other questions of University reform, and prevailed on his colleagues to make some important changes. Largely through his influence the teaching session was extended from five to seven months; the Humanity or Latin class was better organised; the bursary endowments were redistributed for competition ”

“ If not, grave consequences seemed to follow: faith and hope must die out of human life. So Reid argued.
The Treatise of Human Nature was the scarecrow that warned Reid of the destructive consequences of this assumption, that we are shut up among our own ideas; as he had himself in youth been taught to believe, and by which he had been led on to Berkeley’s conception of a wholly ideal material world. He now began to see this ideal material world of Berkeley in a new light. It seemed to leave him alone in the universe of his own mind. ”

“ That every change must be caused, Reid regarded as a postulate of which the contradictory was absolutely inconceivable: it was necessarily implied in the common rational sense of Man, and, while incapable of logical proof, was that without which nothing else could be proved. That the things presented to our senses are themselves powerless; that all power is spiritual, referable only to Will; and that this is the common sense implicate of our physical and moral experience of changes, was the proposition which Reid now set himself to justify. ”

“ I know that my body is anything but shapely; but my soul—that, I trust, is different. But, Señoritas, surely you remember me?”
While speaking, he had raised himself into an upright attitude, and the moonlight falling upon him showed his shape in all its grotesqueness of outline. This, with his words, at once recalled their having seen him before. Yes; it was the enano, whom the big Texan had swung up to the box of their carriage. ”

“ W. Riddell from Dumfries on 29 Jan. 1796: ‘I am just sitting to Reid in this town for a miniature, and I think he has hit by far the best likeness of me ever taken. When you are at any time so idle in town as to call at Reid's painting-room, and mention to him that I spoke of such a thing to you, he will shew it to you, else he will not; for both the miniature's existence and its destiny are an inviolable secret’ (Burns, Works, ed. W. Douglas, 1879, vi. 181) . ”

“ It was at this moment that the dog Cibolo first uttered his growl of alarm.
“Fly—fly!” cried Catalina as she saw her lover approach. “Oh! do not think of me! They dare not take my life. I have committed no offence. Oh, Carlos, leave me! fly! Madre de Dios! they come this way!”
As she spoke a number of dark forms were seen entering from the avenue, and coming down the garden. Their scabbards clanked among the bushes as they rushed through them. They were soldiers on foot! Several remained by the entrance, while the rest ran forward.
Carlos had for a moment contemplated escape in that direction. ”

“ Yes, rather far-fetched, I agree, but Fate is often like a novelette.
"Mr. Peter Reid had meant to ask the Jardines to leave The Rigs and let him settle there, but—there must have been a soft part somewhere in the hard little man—he hadn't the heart to do it when he found how attached they were to the place. ”

“ Then suddenly springing to his feet, with clenched fist and flashing eyes, he cried out—
“Wide though the prairie plains, and faint the trail of these dastardly robbers, yet keen is the eye of Carlos the cibolero! I shall find thee yet—I shall find thee, though it cost me the search of a life. Fear not, Rosita! fear not, sweet sister! I come to your rescue! If thou art wronged, woe, woe, to the tribe that has done it!” Then turning to Don Juan, he continued,—“The night is on—we can do nothing to-night. Don Juan!—friend, brother!—bring me to her—to my mother.” ”

“ What does Bill say to it?"
"I say, stay here," put in the voice of the sailor. "It won't do to stray the wan from the t'other. No, it won't. Let us hold fast, thin, where we're already belayed."
"But who the deuce can sleep here?" remonstrated the son of Erin. "A hard-worked horse can sleep standing; and so can an elephant, they say; but, for me, I'd prefer six feet of the horizontal—even if it were a hard stone—to this slope of the softest sand."
"Stay, Terry!" cried Colin. "I've captured an idea."
"Ah! you Scotch are always capturing something—whether it be an idea, a flea, or the itch. ”

“ It was thus that Reid’s uneventful life of thought—deep, steady, unobtrusive—was sustained for sixteen years, when he was educating the rising generation in the old class-room at the College; unfolding philosophy in correspondence with a sympathetic friend; contributing essays to the Literary Society which met monthly at the College; and preparing his 'Brief Account' of Aristotle—all until he had reached his seventieth year. On the 19th of May 1780 he wrote to Lord Kames of a change that had occurred the day before:—
'I find myself growing old ”

“ But even among these tapsters and stable-helpers, there were some who had refrained from being forced into a lip loyalty; and who echoed the second sentiment with a fervent spirit, and a full knowledge of its everlasting antagonism to the first.
When the ultimate syllable of this sacred phrase had died upon the ear of the assembled crowd, it was succeeded by a silence ominous and expectant. Two individuals commanded the attention of all—the captain of the cuirassiers, and the horseman who had halted upon the road: the toaster of the “king,” and the proposer of the “people.” ”