idealism in their
bearings on this problem. He regarded them as habits of thought--as
dispositions of mind peculiar to certain individuals of vexatious
character and unsound principles, instead of viewing them as catholic
eras in the development of all genuine speculative thinking. In his eyes
they were subjective crotchets limited to some, and not objective crises
common to all, who think. He made _personal_ matters of them--a thing
not to be endured. For instance, in dealing with Hume, he conceived that
the scepticism which confronted him in the pages of that great genius,
was _Hume's_ scepticism, and was not the scepticism of human nature at
large,--was not his own scepticism just as much as it was Hume's. _His_
soul, so he thought, was free from the obnoxious flaw, merely because
_his_ anatomy, shallower than Hume's, refused to lay it bare. With such
views it was impossible for Reid to eliminate scepticism and idealism
from philosophy. These foes are the foes of each man's own house and
heart, and nothing can be made of them if we attack them in the person
of another. Ultimately and fairly to get rid of them, a man must first
of all thoroughly digest them, and take them up into the vital
circulation of his own reason. The only way of putting them back is by
carrying them forward.

From having never properly secreted scepticism and idealism in his own
mind, Reid fell into the commission of one of the gravest errors of
which a philosopher can be guilty. He falsified the fact in regard to
our primitive beliefs--a thing which the obnoxious systems against which
he was fighting never did. He conceived that scepticism and idealism
called in question a fact which was countenanced by a natural belief;
accordingly, he confronted their denial with the allegation that the
disputed fact--the existence of matter _per se_--was guaranteed by a
primitive conviction of our nature. But this fact receives no support
from any such source. There is no belief in the whole repository of the
mind which can be fitted on to the existence of matter denuded of all
perception. Therefore, in maintaining the contrary, Reid falsified the
fact in regard to our primitive convictions--in regard to those
principles of common sense which he professed to follow as his guide.
This was a serious slip. The rash step which he here took plunged him
into a much deeper error than that of the sceptic or idealist. They
err[24] in common with him in accepting as