An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 612 passages
Cite this work
- APAThomas Reid. (n.d.). An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-reid/an-inquiry-into-the-human-mind-on-the-principles-of-common-sense
- MLAThomas Reid. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-reid/an-inquiry-into-the-human-mind-on-the-principles-of-common-sense.
- ChicagoThomas Reid. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-reid/an-inquiry-into-the-human-mind-on-the-principles-of-common-sense.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Reid's first book, of 1764, and his most direct: an examination of the five senses to show that perception does not work as the received philosophy said.
Context and history
Reid explains at the outset that reading Hume he saw that his conclusions followed correctly from a premise everyone accepted, and that the premise must therefore be false. This book is the demonstration made case by concrete case: a chapter on smell, one on taste, one on hearing, one on touch and four on sight, and in each he shows that sensation and perception are not the same thing, and that what we perceive is not ideas but objects. The analysis of sight and of the perception of distance influenced later experimental psychology. Reid's two longer works — the 'Intellectual Powers' and the 'Active Powers' — are in the corpus and come after this.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The language of philosophers, with regard to the original faculties of the mind, is so adapted to the prevailing system that it cannot fit any other ; like a coat that fits the man for whom it was made, and shows him to advantage, which yet will sit very awkward upon one of a different make, although perhaps as handsome and as well proportioned. It is hardly possible to make any innovation in our philosophy concerning the mind and its operations, without using new words and phrases, or giving a different meaning to those that are received ; a liberty which, even when necessary, creates prejudice and misconstruction, and which must wait the sanction of time to authorize it. For, innovations in language, like those in religion and government, are always suspected and disliked by the many, till use hath made them familiar and prescription have given them a title. If the original perceptions and motions of the mind were to make their appearance single and unmixed, as we first received them from the hand of nature, one accustomed to reflection would have less difficulty in tracing them ; but before we are capable of reflection, they are so mixed, compounded, and decompounded by habits, associations, and abstractions, that it is hard to know what they were originally. The mind may in this respect be compared to an apothecary or a chemist, whose materials indeed are furnished by nature; but for the purposes of his art, he mixes, compounds, dissolves, evaporates, and sublimes them, till they put on a quite different appearance ; so that it is very difficult to know what they were 6 OF THE HUMAN MIND. [CHAP. I. at first, and much more to bring them back to their original and natural form.…