‘Before entering upon the subject of my prelections, there are some things which I think proper to lay before you, and to which I beg your attention. I doubt not that you are all sensible of the loss which the University, and you in particular, sustain by the resignation of the learned and ingenious gentleman who last filled this chair. Those who knew him most and had most access to attend his prelections, and especially those who most profited by them, will be most sensible of their loss. I had not the happiness of his personal acquaintance, for want of opportunity; though I wished for it, and now wish for it far more than ever. But I could not be a stranger to his fame and reputation, nor to the respect with which his lectures from this chair were heard by a very crowded audience. I am much a stranger to his system, unless so far as he hath published it to the world. But a man of so great genius and penetration must have struck new light to the subjects which he treated, as well as have handled them in an excellent and instructive manner. I shall be much obliged to any of you, gentlemen, or to any others, who can furnish me with notes of his prelections, whether in morals, jurisprudence, politics, or rhetorick. I shall always be desirous to borrow light from every quarter, and to adopt what appears to me sound and solid in every system, and ready to change my opinions upon conviction, or to change my method and materials where I can do it to advantage. I desire to live no longer than this candour and ingenuity, this openness of mind to education and information, live with me.’
An apology follows for the imperfect preparation of a first course, inadequately provided for by the miscellaneous lectures in physics and metaphysics at Aberdeen. The past performance of Adam Smith, and the high expectation associated with the new professor, the author of the Inquiry, were doubtless fresh in the minds of the crowded audience that met on that October morning in the faint light of the Old College class-room. The audience, the new professor, and his predecessor, have all now receded into the dim distance, and are seen under the cold light of history. The lectures delivered in the years that followed are preserved at Birkwood, in Reid’s valley of the Dee—lectures on Pneumatology, Ethics, Jurisprudence, and Political Philosophy—for the most part embodied in substance in the published Essays of his old age.
Reid’s placid temperament and restrained imagination suggest sober unadorned statement, and cautious inference founded on fact, not fervid eloquence, as the character of his prelections. He was more likely slowly to influence opinion by his books than to startle a youthful audience by spoken words. This conjecture is confirmed by the account of Reid in the Glasgow class-room given by Dugald Stewart, who was among his students in 1772-73. ‘In his elocution and mode of instruction,’ Stewart says, ‘there was nothing peculiarly attractive. He seldom if ever indulged in the warmth of extempore discourse; nor was his manner of reading calculated to increase the effect of what he had committed to writing. Such, however, was the simplicity and perspicuity of his style, such the gravity and authority of his character, and such the general interest of his young hearers in the doctrines which he taught, that by the numerous audiences to which his instructions were addressed he was heard uniformly with the most silent and respectful attention.’ And this delivery of deep and patient thought, regarding the duties and relations of man, and the foundation of his beliefs, was continued in the class-room for sixteen years.
As we might expect from their mental affinities, Reid greatly esteemed the works of Bishop Butler. Among the manuscripts at Birkwood is an abstract of the Analogy; and Butler’s ethical writings were recommended to his students as the best in the literature of moral philosophy, with regret to see them superseded in England by the productions of inferior moralists. In tone and method of inquiry Reid is the Butler of Scotland. And Butler, too, is the Reid of England in his trustful appeals to what Reid would call the common sense. When Butler asks himself whether we may not be deceived in our natural sense of our continuous personal identity, he replies, that ‘this question may be asked at the end of any demonstration; because it is a question concerning the truth of perception by memory. And he who can doubt whether perception by memory can in this case be depended on, may doubt also whether perception, by reasoning, or indeed whether any intuitive perception, can. Here then we can go no further. For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other perceptions which there is just the same ground to suspect; or to attempt to prove the truth of our faculties, which can no otherwise be proved than by these very suspected faculties themselves.’ This is the substance of the argument that rests on the data of the sense or reason with which human nature is inspired.
Reid’s homely letters to his Aberdeen friends, Andrew and David Skene, give some interesting pictures of the details of the family’s life, in the years which immediately followed the settlement in Glasgow. The extracts that follow may help the reader to form the pictures.
In a letter to Dr. Andrew Skene, dated November 15, 1764, we see the Moral Philosophy class-room on a winter morning a hundred and thirty years ago, and life in the Drygate home a few weeks after the family entered it:—
‘I must launch forth in the morning, so as to be at the College (which is a walk of eight minutes) half an hour after seven, when I speak for an hour without interruption to an audience of about a hundred. At eleven I examine for an hour upon my morning prelection; but my audience is a little more than a third part of what it was in the morning. In a week or two I must, for three days in the week, have a second prelection at twelve, upon a different subject, where my audience will be made up of those who hear me in the morning but do not attend at eleven. My hearers commonly attend my class two years at least. They pay fees for the first two years, and then they are cives of the class, and may attend gratis as many years as they please. Many attend the moral philosophy class four or five years; so that I have many preachers and students of divinity and law of considerable standing, before whom I stand in awe to speak without more preparation than I have leisure for. I have a great inclination to attend some of the professors here, several of whom are very eminent in their way; but I cannot find leisure. Much time is consumed in our college meetings about business, of which we have commonly four or five in the week. We have a Literary Society once a week, consisting of the Masters and two or three more; where each of the members has a discourse once in the session.... Near a third part of our students are Irish. Thirty came over lately in one ship, besides three that went to Edinburgh. We have a good many English, and some foreigners. Many of the Irish, as well as Scotch, are poor, and come up late to save money; so that we are not yet fully convened, although I have been teaching ever since the 10th of October. Those who pretend to know, say that the number of students this year, when fully convened, will amount to 300.... By this time I am sure you have enough of the College; for you know as much as I can tell you of the fine houses of the Masters, of the Astronomical Observatory, of Robin Foulis’ collection of pictures and painting college, and of the foundry for types and printing-house. Therefore I will carry you home to my own house, which lyes among the middle of the weavers, like the back-wynd in Aberdeen. You go through a long, dark, abominably nasty entry, which leads you into a clean little close. You walk upstairs to a neat little dining-room, and find as many other little rooms as just accommodate my family; so scantily that my apartment is a closet of six feet by eight or nine off the dining-room. To balance these little inconveniences, the house is new and free of buggs; it has the best air and finest prospect in Glasgow; the privilege of a large garden, very airy, to walk in, which is not so nicely kept, but one may use freedom with it. A five minutes’ walk leads us up a rocky precipice into a large park, partly planted with firs, and partly open, which overlooks the town and all the country round, and gives a view of the windings of the Clyde for a great way. The ancient Cathedral stands at the foot of the rock, half of its height below you, and half above you; and indeed it is a very magnificent pile. When we came here, the street we live in (which is called the Drygate) was infested with the small-pox, which were very mortal. Two families in our neighbourhood lost all their children, being three each. Little David was seized with the infection, and had a very great eruption both on his face and over his whole body, which you will believe would discompose his mother.... Although my salary here be the same as Aberdeen, yet if the class does not fall off, nor my health, so as to disable me from teaching, I believe I shall be able to live as easily as at Aberdeen, notwithstanding the differences in the expense of living at the two places. I have touched about £70 of fees, and may possibly make out the £100 this session.... The common people here have a gloom in their countenance, which I am at a loss whether to ascribe to their religion or to the air and climate. There is certainly more of religion among the common people in this town than in Aberdeen; and although it has a gloomy enthusiastical cast, yet I think it makes them tame and sober. I have not heard either of a house or of a head broke, or of a pocket picked, or of any flagrant crime, since I came here. I have not heard any swearing in the streets, nor seen a man drunk (excepting, inter nos, one Prof—r) since I came here.... If this scroll tire you, impute it to this, that to-morrow is to be employed in choosing a Rector, and I can sleep till ten o’clock, which I shall not do again for six weeks.’
After the first winter, and when he had gained some experience of Glasgow, he writes to Dr. David Skene, on 13th July 1765:—
‘I have a strong inclination to attend the chymical lecture the next winter; but am afraid I shall not have time. I have had but very imperfect hints of Dr. Black’s theory of fire.... Chemistry seems to be the only branch of philosophy that can be said to be in a progressive state here, although other branches are neither ill taught nor ill studied. I never considered Dolland’s telescopes till I came here. I think they open a new field in optics which may greatly enrich that part of philosophy.... I find a variety of things here to amuse me in the literary world, and want nothing so much as my old friends, whose place I cannot expect at my time of life to supply. I think the common people here and in the neighbourhood greatly inferior to the common people with you. They are Bœotian in their understandings, fanatical in their religion, and clownish in their dress and manners. The clergy encourage this fanaticism too much, and find it the only way to popularity. I often hear a gospel here which you know nothing about; for you neither hear it from the pulpit nor will you find it in the Bible. What is your Philosophical Society doing? Still battling about D. Hume? or have you time to look in?... I believe you do not like to be charged with compliments, otherwise I would desire of you to remember me respectfully to Sir Archibald Grant, Sir Arthur and Lady Forbes, and others of my country acquaintances, when you have occasion to see them.’
In another letter to Dr. David, written about Christmas in his second winter, we find that—