[728] ‘The laws of nature are the most general facts we can discover in the operations of nature. Like other facts, they are not to be hit upon by a happy conjecture, but justly deduced from observation. Like other general facts, they are not to be drawn from a few particulars, but from a copious, patient, and cautious induction.’ Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, pp. 262, 263.
[729] ‘Such discoveries have always been made by patient observation, by accurate experiments, or by conclusions drawn by strict reasoning from observations and experiments; and such discoveries have always tended to refute, but not to confirm, the theories and hypotheses which ingenious men had invented.’ Reid's Essays, vol. i. p. 46.
[730] ‘This is Mr. Hume's notion of a cause.’ … ‘But theory ought to stoop to fact, and not fact to theory.’ Reid's Essays, vol. iii. p. 276.
[731] ‘But yet there seems to be great difference of opinions among philosophers about first principles. What one takes to be self-evident, another labours to prove by arguments, and a third denies altogether.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 218. ‘Mr. Locke seems to think first principles of very small use.’ p. 219.
[732] ‘All reasoning must be from first principles; and for first principles no other reason can be given but this, that, by the constitution of our nature, we are under a necessity of assenting to them.’ Reid's Inquiry, p. 140. ‘All reasoning is from principles.’ … ‘Most justly, therefore, do such principles disdain to be tried by reason, and laugh at all the artillery of the logician when it is directed against them.’ p. 372. ‘All knowledge got by reasoning must be built upon first principles.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 220. ‘In every branch of real knowledge there must be first principles, whose truth is known intuitively, without reasoning, either probable or demonstrative. They are not grounded on reasoning, but all reasoning is grounded on them.’ p. 360.
[733] ‘For, when any system is grounded upon first principles, and deduced regularly from them, we have a thread to lead us through the labyrinth.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 225.
[734] ‘I call these “first principles,” because they appear to me to have in themselves an intuitive evidence which I cannot resist.’ Reid's Essays, vol. iii. p. 375.
[735] ‘If any man should think fit to deny that these things are qualities, or that they require any subject, I leave him to enjoy his opinion, as a man who denies first principles, and is not fit to be reasoned with.’ Reid's Essays, vol. i. p. 38.
[736] ‘No other account can be given of the constitution of things, but the will of Him that made them.’ Reid's Essays, vol. i. p. 115.
[737] Reid's Essays, vol. i. pp. 36, 37, 340, 343, vol. ii. p. 245.