Thomas Reid
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [1]
a celebrated Scotch divine and metaphysician, was born at Strachan in 1710. He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and became its librarian, a position which he resigned in 1736. In 1737 he was presented by King's College, Aberdeen, to the living of New Machar, Aberdeenshire, and was appointed professor of moral philosophy in the abovenamed college in 1752. In 1764 he succeeded Adam Smith as professor of moral philosophy in the University of Glasgow, retiring in 1781. He died Oct. 7, 1796. He published, Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind (Edinb. 1819, 3 vols. 8vo): — Inquiry into the Human Mind (Edinb. 1763; 5th ed. 1801, 8vo). These and numerous Essays, etc., were collected and published under the title of The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., now fully Collected, etc. (6th ed. Edinb. 1863, 2 vols. 8vo). See Allibone, Dict. of Brit. and Amer. Authors, s.v. (See Scottish Philosophy)
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The Nuttall Encyclopedia [2]
Scottish philosopher, and chief of the Scottish school, born in Kincardineshire, and bred for the Scotch Church, in which he held office as a clergyman for a time; was roused to philosophical speculation by the appearance in 1730 of David Hume's "Treatise on Human Nature," and became professor of Philosophy in Aberdeen in 1752, and in Glasgow in 1763, where the year after he published his "Inquiry into the Human Mind," which was followed in course of time by his "Philosophy of the Intellectual and Active Powers"; his philosophy was a protest against the scepticism of Hume, founded on the idealism of Berkeley, by appeal to the "common-sense" of mankind, which admits of nothing intermediate between the perceptions of the mind and the reality of things (1710-1796).
