to test it in a course of active public instruction, at the same time that he was one of the founders and leaders of a Literary Society, which then rendered Aberdeen a focus of Scottish intellect. From King’s College Reid was, in 1764, removed to the chair of Morals in Glasgow, which he occupied actively for nearly twenty years, after which, until his death in 1796, he was engaged in preparing for the press and publishing his final and more elaborate treatises, in a serene old age, eminently characteristic of the long term of cheerful meditative industry, and the habits of integrity and self-control which had marked his life.*
The Scottish Philosophy of Dr. Reid, and the ScotoGerman Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, constitute together an important stage in the great revolution which metaphysical science has been undergoing since the age of Des Cartes, and as such, they occupy an important historical place in modern philosophy. A few sentences of explanation may illustrate this.
Des Cartes is an influential and prominent person in the succession of great thinkers, chiefly because he was
