Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense

London and Edinburgh

Printed for A. Millar and A. Kincaid & J. Bell

1764

"The painter, the poet, the actor, the orator, the moralist, and the statesman, attempt to operate upon the mind in different ways, and for different ends; and they succeed, according as they touch properly the strings of the human frame."

In the arts and sciences which have least connection with the mind, its faculties are the engines which we must employ; and the better we understand their nature and use, their defects and disorders, the more skilfully we shall apply them, and with the greater success. But in the noblest arts, the mind is also the subject upon which we operate. The painter, the poet, the actor, the orator, the moralist, and the statesman, attempt to operate upon the mind in different ways, and for different ends; and they succeed, according as they touch properly the strings of the human frame. Nor can their several arts ever, stand on a solid foundation, or rise to the dignity of science, until they are built on the principles of the human constitution.
(I.i, p. 11)

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Reading

An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense. By Thomas Reid, D. D. Professor of Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen (Edinburgh: Printed for A. Millar and A. Kincaid & J. Bell, 1764). <Link to ECCO> The third edition is available in Google Books <Link>

See also fourth edition of 1785, which serves as the copy text for Derek Brookes' critical edition published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

03/06/2011