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Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment

C. B. Bow
Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN13: 9780198783909
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198783909.001.0001
Title Pages
Charles Bradford Bow
(p.i) Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
(p.ii) Mind Association occasional Series
(p.iii) Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
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C. B. Bow

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(p.vii) Notes on the Contributors


is an Assistant Professor of Global Intellectual History at Yonsei
University. His research on the intellectual history of
Enlightenment(s) and imperialism has appeared in Modern
Intellectual History, The Scottish Historical Review, Historical
Research, History of European Ideas, History, Intellectual History
Review, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and EighteenthCentury
Scotland.
Claire Etchegaray
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris Ouest—
Nanterre La Défense and member of the Institut de Recherches
Philosophiques (IRePh). Her research interests involve the Scottish
Enlightenment, human nature, judgment, reasoning, and
scepticism. Her research has appeared in the journals History of
European Ideas, Archives de philosophie, and in the volumes Croit
on comme on veut? Histoire d’une controverse; Revue de
métaphysique et de morale: Le scepticisme aux limites de la
question; Histoire d’une controverse; Medical Empiricism and
Philosophy of Human Nature in the 17th and 18th Century; and
Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières,
Aufklärung.
Giovanni Gellera
is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Lausanne in the
Swiss National Science Foundation project ‘Tolerance, Intolerance
and Discrimination Regarding Religion’ (2016–20). At the
University of Glasgow, he worked in the Leverhulme Project
‘Scottish Philosophers in 17th-Century Scotland and France’ (2010–
14) and wrote a Ph.D. thesis (2012) on seventeenth-century Scottish
philosophy. He works on the interactions between scholasticism
and early modern philosophy, from the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment. His research has appeared in British Journal for
the History of Philosophy, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, History
of Universities, Intellectual History Review. With Alexander
Broadie, he is working on the first edition and translation of the
Idea philosophiae moralis by James Dundas (1679), for Edinburgh
University Press.
Gordon Graham
is Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton
Theological Seminary. His areas of academic interest include
aesthetics, moral philosophy, philosophy of religion, and the
Scottish philosophical tradition. He is Director of the Center for the
Study of Scottish Philosophy at Princeton and founding editor of the
Journal of Scottish Philosophy.
(p.viii) Giovanni B. Grandi
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of British
Columbia, Okanagan Campus. His research on Scottish philosophy
has appeared in Journal of Scottish Philosophy, Studies in History
and Philosophy of Science, History of Philosophy Quarterly,
Journal of Scottish Thought, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and
EighteenthCentury Thought. He is the editor of Thomas Reid:
Selected Philosophical Writings (2012).
James A. Harris
is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of St
Andrews. He is the author of Hume: An Intellectual Biography
(2015) and Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in
EighteenthCentury British Philosophy (2005). He has published
articles on Hume, Hutcheson, Reid, Beattie, Priestley, and a number
of themes in eighteenth-century British philosophy. He is the editor
of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in EighteenthCentury
Britain (2013), and also (with Aaron Garrett) of Volume one of
Scottish Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment (2015). He has
edited texts by Reid (with Knud Haakonssen), Beattie, Kames, and
Abraham Tucker. He has held fellowships from the Leverhulme
Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and in
2012–13 was Member of the Institute for Advanced Study
(Princeton).
Esther Engels Kroeker
is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Antwerp. Part of her
research is focused on Reid’s moral psychology. She has published
papers on Reid’s moral philosophy, moral perception, and agency.
Some of her recently published articles are Reid on Natural Signs,

Taste and Moral Perception (2009), Reid’s Moral Psychology:
Animal Motives as Guides to Virtue (2011), and Acting from a Good
Conscience: Reid, Love, and Moral Worth (2013). Her research
extends to David Hume’s moral psychology and philosophy of
religion, and her work also focuses on the contemporary debate
surrounding love and practical reasons. She is the co-editor (with
Katrien Schaubroeck) of Love, Reason and Morality (2017).
R. J. W. Mills
is Teaching Fellow in the History of Political Thought at the
University College London. He has articles published or in press on
numerous Scottish thinkers including James Beattie, Archibald
Campbell, Henry Home, Lord Kames, and Alexander Ross and is
currently working on a book about the Scottish Enlightenment’s
application of the ‘science of human nature’ to the study of religion.
Paul B. Wood
Professor Emeritus in the History Department at the University
Victoria in Canada who has published widely on the Scottish
Enlightenment. For the Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid he has
edited Thomas Reid (p.ix) on Mathematics and Natural
Philosophy (2017), (with Knud Haakonssen) Thomas Reid on
Society and Politics (2015), The Correspondence of Thomas Reid
(2002), and Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation (1995). He is
currently at work on the final volume in the series, Thomas Reid
and the University, with Alexander Broadie.
(p.x)
Copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.
Introduction
University Press Scholarship Online

C. B. Bow

Print ISBN-13: 9780198783909
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198783909.001.0001
Introduction
C. B. Bow
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198783909.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords

This volume of essays considers the philosophical and
historical significance of common sense philosophy in the
Scottish Enlightenment. As one of eighteenth-century
Scotland’s most original intellectual products, common sense
philosophy dominated the teaching of moral philosophy and
the “science of the mind” at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and
Aberdeen universities during the last quarter of the century,
and also informed many Presbyterian clergymen’s treatment
of human nature from the pulpit....
This volume of essays considers the philosophical and

historical significance of common sense philosophy in the
Scottish Enlightenment. As one of eighteenth-century
Scotland’s most original intellectual products, common sense
philosophy dominated the teaching of moral philosophy and
the “science of the mind” at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and
Aberdeen universities during the last quarter of the century,
and also informed many Presbyterian clergymen’s treatment
of human nature from the pulpit.1 Reflecting on the
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Introduction
importance of this philosophical system, which was widely

known as “the Scottish philosophy” by the nineteenth century,
the Presbyterian divine and philosopher James McCosh wrote:
Scottish metaphysicians and moralists have left their

impress on their own land, not only on the ministers of
religion, and through them upon the body of people, but
also on the whole thinking mind of the country. The
chairs of mental science in the Scottish colleges have
had more influence than any others in germinating
thought in the minds of Scottish youth, and in giving
permanent bias and direction to their intellectual
growth.
(McCosh, 1875: 8)
In these ways common sense philosophy informed the

understanding and exercise of human improvement in the
intellectual and moral culture of the Scottish Enlightenment.2
Thomas Reid popularized prominent features of this

philosophical system, which were later used as criteria to
identify the Scottish “school” of common (p.2) sense
philosophy.3 Writing in 1764, Reid recalled that when he was
initially confronted with David Hume’s brand of scepticism in
the 1740s, Hume’s “reasoning appeared to me to be just: there
was therefore a necessity to call in question the principles
upon which it was founded, or to admit the conclusion” (Reid,
1764: iv). Eventually Reid countered Hume’s Treatise of
Human Nature (1739–40) with An Inquiry into the Mind on the
Principles of Common Sense (1764). Dugald Stewart, who had
studied under Reid at Glasgow University in 1771–2, later
remarked that Reid’s “leading design was evidently to
overthrow the modern system of scepticism” (Stewart, 1811:
452–3). In order to establish a new empirical system for future
inquiries in the science of mind Reid focused on vindicating
his “principles of common sense” and undermining the “Ideal
Theory” upon which he believed modern scepticism was
founded. Stewart highlighted the philosophical significance of
Reid’s attack on the “way of ideas” when he wrote that, “On
the refutation of the ideal theory […] Dr. Reid himself was
disposed to rest his chief merit as an author […] and
something, perhaps, has been added to his labors by those of
his successors” (Stewart, 1822: 354). The ways in which Reid
and moralists associated with the Scottish “school” of common
Page 2 of 26
Introduction
sense developed a viable alternative to Humean scepticism

and the Ideal Theory is the overarching theme of the essays
which appear in this volume.
The volume originated from the British Society for the History
of Philosophy’s 2014 annual conference hosted by Edinburgh
University and supported by the Mind Association, Scots
Philosophical Society, and Taylor & Francis publishers.
Featuring the research of philosophers and intellectual
historians from nine countries and over twenty cities, the
three-day conference explored new avenues to better
understand the place of common sense philosophy within the
Scottish Enlightenment. While the scholarly exchange
between philosophers and intellectual historians is not new,
this dialogue, as we experienced it, encourages a deeper and
more complete examination of philosophical ideas and their
historical value. This volume, which is the first edited
collection devoted exclusively to the philosophy and history of
Scottish common sense during the long eighteenth century,
presents the fruits of the exchanges which took place at the
conference.4 The philosophical writings of Thomas Reid and
David Hume factor prominently in the volume as influential
authors of competing ideas in the history of common (p.3)
sense philosophy. While recent scholarship traces the
transnational reception of common sense philosophy, this
volume centres on recovering its understudied significance in
British contexts.5 The following chapters, which all embody
original and innovative research, shed new light on prominent
features of this philosophical system, including the
methodological use of the inductive method, the subscription
to universal self-evident principles regarded as instincts
rooted in human nature, the conscious awareness of the
intellectual, active, and moral powers of mind, and the belief
in a providential God. This introduction offers a brief overview
of the philosophical themes, historical contexts, and
philosophers examined in this volume.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was considered by Reid to be the

founder of the Ideal Theory, which was also known as the “way
of ideas” or “theory of ideas” in the Enlightenment. Beginning
with seventeenth-century Scottish scholastics, Scottish moral
philosophers responded to Descartes’ philosophy in a variety
of ways. His Discourse on Method (1637) and Principles of
Philosophy (1644) appealed to mathematical principles in
formulating a “rational” philosophical approach to
Page 3 of 26
Introduction
metaphysics, epistemology, and morals.6 John Marshall

suggests that Descartes’ ideal moral theory was intended as
an “exact science”, rather than a mere technique of self
government.7 As a new type of epistemological scepticism,
Descartes brought scholastic direct “realism”, which accepted
the existence of transcendental universals within the material
and moral worlds, into question as a reliable belief system.
After removing “weak” beliefs concerning divinely inspired
material existence, Descartes’ ideal theory accepted “only
what is certain and unshakable”, which did account for some
“realist” beliefs concerning the existence of the material world
in his Meditations (Descartes, 1996: 17). The Cartesian
ambition to secure the foundations of human knowledge in
order to construct a rigorous deductive system of the sciences
challenged the principles of Aristotelian scholasticism.
Although he was a professed Catholic, Descartes’ intervention
in theological and philosophical debates of the early
seventeenth century initiated a prolonged controversy over his
treatment of the “rational soul” and our knowledge of God’s
causal powers.8 Whereas sharp philosophical divisions
emerged between scholastics and Cartesians in continental
Europe during the seventeenth century, Scottish philosophers
in the period sought to harmonize Descartes’ ideas with
scholastic philosophy.
(p.4) The literature on the seventeenth-century Scottish

reception of Cartesianism was, until recently, dominated by
the scholarship of C. M. Shepherd.9 With a focus on
seventeenth-century graduation theses at Scottish
universities, Giovanni Gellera refines the scope of Shepherd’s
earlier work on Scottish philosophical debates of the period by
examining how Descartes’ philosophy affected Scotland’s
Reformed philosophy in higher education. According to
Gellera, around the middle of the century Scottish university
curricula instituted a variety of reforms in response to
Cartesianism. These changes were best shown in new
Reformed doctrinal characteristics in the teaching of
metaphysics, natural philosophy, and epistemology.10 The
broader diffusion of this Reformed Scottish scholasticism, as
Alasdair Raffe argues, signified a transitional moment in
Scotland’s intellectual culture.11 In the first chapter “Common
Sense and Ideal Theory in Seventeenth-Century Scottish
Philosophy”, Gellera documents the extent to which
seventeenth-century Scottish scholastic philosophers
Page 4 of 26
Introduction
anticipated two of Thomas Reid’s main criticisms of the Ideal

Theory. Scottish scholastic theorists maintained that belief
plays a part in sense perception and that the general reliability
of the senses is a first principle of knowledge. This treatment
of sense perception as furnishing reliable and direct evidence
regarding the existence and the nature of the external world
(the view known as “realism”) suggests that there were
important doctrinal continuities between seventeenth-century
Scottish scholastic theorists and the common sense
philosophers of the Enlightenment era.
One of the most important forums for the development of

common sense philosophy was the Aberdeen Philosophical
Society, which was also known as the “Wise Club”. Founded in
1758 to discuss “philosophical” subjects, the Wise Club
boasted a membership drawn from the professional elite of
Aberdeen and the north-east of Scotland that included George
Campbell, John Gregory, David Skene, Alexander Gerard,
Thomas Reid, and James Beattie.12 According to Thomas Reid,
the writings of David Hume dominated discussions within the
Society. On 18 March 1763, Reid wrote to Hume:
Your Friendly Adversaries Drs Campbel & Gerard as well

as Dr Gregory return their Compliments to you
respectively. A little Philosophical Society here of which
all the three are members, is much indebted to you for
its Entertainment […] If you write no more in morals
politicks or metaphysicks [sic], I am afraid we shall be at
a loss for Subjects.
(Reid, 2002: 31)
(p.5) Hume figured prominently in the proceedings of the

Wise Club largely because his radical scepticism alerted Reid
and other common sense theorists to the dangers of the Ideal
Theory. In addition to Humean scepticism, common sense
philosophers discussed theories endorsed by Descartes, John
Locke, George Berkeley, and Nicholas Malebranche as
exemplars of the Ideal Theory.13 Above all, undermining
Hume’s contributions to the “way of ideas” persisted as a
central pursuit in the justification and development of Scottish
common sense philosophy.
Page 5 of 26
Introduction
John Locke’s (1632–1704) invention of British empiricism and

its application to epistemology received attention among
Hume and common sense philosophers.14 In An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Locke’s theory of
ideas famously rejected the existence of innate ideas with the
concept of tabula rasa. His theory of ideas and their
operations showed the ways in which agents acquire
knowledge of the external world through the reflection of
experiences.15 In an appeal to Locke’s anti-innatism and
empiricism, Hume also sought to transform the science of the
mind through the use of the “experimental method of
reasoning” (Hume, 2009: 114–15). Hume recommended that
anatomists of human nature engage in the “cautious
observation of human life”, and attend to the evidence
regarding our intellectual and moral powers found “in the
common course of the world […in] men’s behaviour in
company, in affairs, and in their pleasures” (Hume, 2009: 6).
Of this approach to the science of mind, Reid informed Hume
that, “I have learned more from your writings in this kind than
from all others put together” (Reid, 2002: 31). Reid shared
Hume’s criticisms of Locke’s allegedly ambiguous treatment of
“ideas” as a placeholder for all contents of the mind.16 One of
Hume’s revisions to Locke’s theory of ideas included the
distinction between perceptions of “ideas” drawn from
reasoning and the “impressions” of emotions, passions, and
sensations.17 On this distinction, Reid was alarmed that
rendering knowledge of the world wholly dependent on
psychologically intermediate “impressions”, which led to
“ideas”, made Hume’s system and the “way of ideas” more
generally indefensible against philosophical scepticism.
Consequently, Reid and his fellow common sense philosophers
addressed this concern by developing a new philosophical
system (p.6) to investigate and safeguard the science of the
mind from the dangers of modern scepticism.
The use of the term “common sense” to describe “mother wit”

or a conscious intuitive sense perception did not originate with
Reid or within the Wise Club. The philosophical writings of
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–
1713), George Berkeley, the Bishop of Cloyne (1685–1753),
and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) previously popularized
this belief in Scottish moral philosophy. In developing an early
Enlightenment version of “sentimentalism”, Shaftesbury
argued that the “sense of right and wrong [is] as natural to us
Page 6 of 26
Introduction
as natural affection itself, and being a first Principle in our

constitution and there is no speculative opinion, persuasion or
belief which is capable immediately or directly to exclude or
destroy it” (Shaftesbury, 1999: 179).18 In A Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710),
Berkeley’s theory of “immaterialism”, which attempted to
strengthen religious conviction by removing the consideration
of the material world, offered another alternative to Locke’s
theory of ideas. But that world has to be understood,
metaphysically speaking, as a set of ideas in the mind of God
according to Berkeley.19 While Reid praised Berkeley’s attempt
to safeguard religious convictions and defend the “vulgar” or
general common sense perceptions of reality from
philosophical error, he believed “immaterialism” rendered
evidence and knowledge of the material world impossible.20
For Reid, the unavoidable scepticism of Berkeley’s system was
an unintended consequence of following the “way of ideas”.
As Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University

between 1729 and 1746, Hutcheson’s moral theory on the
natural virtues of humankind and moral-sense cognitivism
drew heavily from Shaftesbury’s example of
“sentimentalism”.21 Hutcheson remarked that “to each of our
powers we seem to have a corresponding taste or sense,
recommending the proper use of it to the agent, and making
him relish or value the like exercise of it by
another” (Hutcheson, 1755: 59). While Hume drew from the
writings of Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson in developing
his version of moral sentimentalism, Reid appealed to
Hutcheson’s example of the “moral sense” in illustrating the
“moral faculty”. According to Reid, “the testimony of our
moral faculty, like that of the external (p.7) senses, is the
testimony of nature, and we have the same reason to rely upon
it” (Reid, 1788: 238). Reid’s account of the moral sense
differed from Hutcheson’s in that Reid argued that agents do
not simply sense moral qualities as Hutcheson had claimed but
form moral judgments through their active powers of mind.
This important distinction situates the innate human ability to
improve the faculties of mind as part of nature’s design.
The ways in which David Hume and Thomas Reid treated

sense perception differently informed the realist and anti-
realist dichotomy within which they are so often categorized
and understood.22 Hume’s moral empiricism observed human
conduct through the use of sense perception. At the same
Page 7 of 26
Introduction
time, he believed that emotional “impressions” of observed

objects and behaviour informed “ideas” of their properties.
This belief led Hume to deny the existence of moral properties.
Contrary to Hume, Reid trusted the testimony of natural sense
perceptions associated with the intellectual and active
operations of the mind. In Chapter 2, “Was Reid a Moral
Realist?”, Gordon Graham examines the extent to which Reid
could be considered a moral realist by comparing his
“objective” reality against Hume’s sentimentalist morality. He
questions if Reid’s opposition to Humean philosophy
encouraged the general categorization of Reid as a moral
realist. Graham provides evidence to interpret Reid’s use of
the analogy between moral sense and sense perception in a
way that does not imply the existence of “real” moral
properties. Reid situated judgment as central in this analogy,
which suggested that the exercise of an intellectual “power”
had primacy over passive sensual experience. The analogy,
therefore, allowed him to apply the concepts “true” and “false”
to moral judgments without any quasi-realist appeal to moral
facts. With a focus on Hume’s treatment of feelings versus
reason and the limits of Reid’s “objective” realism, Graham
suggests nuanced reasons why Reid’s philosophy did not
strictly adhere to the realist and anti-realist dichotomy in
modern philosophy.
Thomas Reid’s and David Hume’s shared interest in furthering

the science of the mind require further qualifications where
their paths diverge. Paul Wood suggests that in understanding
Reid’s philosophy “we must first recognize that Reid was as
much a man of science as he was a moralist” (Wood, 2004: 71).
Reid’s earlier studies at Marischal College, Aberdeen from
1722 to 1726 under the direction of George Turnbull
introduced him to the philosophy of mind conceived of as an
experimental science. Turnbull remarked:
I was led long ago to apply myself to the study of the

human mind in the same way as to the study of the
human body, or any other part of Natural Philosophy:
that is, to (p.8) try whether due enquiry into moral
nature would not soon enable us to account for moral, as
the best of Philosophers teaches us to explain natural
phenomena.
(Turnbull, 1740/2005: 8)
Page 8 of 26
Introduction
Reid’s enthusiasm for Francis Bacon’s inductive method,

which Isaac Newton (1642–1726) popularized in physics, later
played a central part in his moral philosophy. Reid suggested
that “he who philosophizes by other rules, either concerning
the material system, or concerning the mind, mistakes his
aim” (Reid, 1764: 3). Unlike Hume, Reid identified a set of
universal self-evident instinctive beliefs innate in human
nature, namely the “principles of common sense”. Since these
widely held beliefs could not be proven, Reid believed that the
“principles of common sense” allowed anatomists of the mind
to explore the operations of our mental powers without
needing to re-establish the foundations of human knowledge.
Reid and common sense philosophers challenged the Ideal
Theory, as exemplified by Hume’s Treatise (especially in Book
I), because this theory denied one or more of these self-evident
principles of common sense.
Building upon self-evident principles of common sense, this

system’s emphasis on the intellectual and active powers of the
natural constitution of the mind engaged with the broader
debate on “causation” in British philosophy. The debate on
causation questioned the extent to which God intervened in
earthly causes and effects, and whether agents acted out of
necessity or possessed the power to cause an intended effect.
While Hume was concerned with the nature of the necessity
that links a cause to its effect, Reid argued that, “the name of
a cause and of an agent, is properly given to that being only,
which, by its active power produces some change in itself, or
in some other being” (Reid, 1788: 276).23 Reid’s treatment of
causality appealed to Samuel Clarke’s Natural and Revealed
Religion (1705), which he had developed as a Boyle Lecturer
at St Mary-le-Bow Church in London. According to R. F.
Stalley, “Reid’s endorsement of Clarke’s argument shows that,
for him too, the idea that we are free agents is bound up with
the idea that motives are not causes” (Stalley, 2004: 44).
George Pappas shows that Reid’s view of causality was
somewhat prefigured in Berkeley’s philosophy.24 Reid
suggested that the concept of necessity reduced all human
actions to the exclusive determination of God and, therefore,
denied any human freedom in choosing to act or refrain from
an action. According to Reid, if the system of necessity existed
“there can be no moral government, nor moral obligation [and]
there can be no display of moral attributes” (Reid, 1788: 309).
Page 9 of 26
Introduction
(p.9) In these ways Reid identified intellectual and active

powers of the natural constitution as the way for agents to
merit moral approbation.
The literature on Reid’s treatment of causality links his

entwined notion of sense perception, moral judgment, and
“realism” discussed in Chapter 2.25 The question of how these
operations of the natural mental “constitution” factored into
Reid’s version of common sense philosophy is understudied in
the literature. The term “constitution” received various
meanings in early modern medicine, moral, and natural
philosophy. In Chapter 3, “Reid on Our Mental Constitution”,
Claire Etchegaray contributes new insight to a more precise
understanding of Reid’s treatment of the mental “constitution”
by examining the ways in which he accounted for knowledge
of reality and discernment of truth in the anatomy of the mind.
In doing so, Etchegaray evaluates Reid on belief-justification
and his reference to our mental constitution as an already
truthful informant of a knowing subject. Reid did not simply
suggest that knowledge was a natural gift from God. Reid’s
anatomy of the mind sought to explain how natural powers
operate in providing access to reality. With a particular focus
on Reid’s undated and still unpublished manuscript “Of
Constitution”, Etchegaray distinguishes Reid’s approach to the
anatomy of mind from subjectivism. For Reid, the “first
principles of common sense”, as fixed maxims of the mental
constitution, provided an explanation of why mental powers
functioned independently from divine intervention. Etchegaray
concludes on the originality of Reid’s anti-scepticism by
showing the ways in which he treated the “constitution” of the
mind as a subject of knowledge.
In Chapter 4, “On the Ancestry of Reid’s Inquiry”, Giovanni

Grandi shows that Reid’s rejection of the Ideal Theory implied
that sensations were not copies of external qualities such as
extension and figure. While Reid’s Inquiry suggested that
spatiality did not affect the order of sensations, his earlier
unpublished manuscripts on the subject did not deny that
sensations were arranged spatially. Grandi argues that the
differences in Reid’s treatment of sense perception responded
to contextual considerations. Reid primarily denied that ideas
of extension and figure were copied from any single atomic
sensation. At the same time, he also argued that the spatial
relations among atomic sensations were detected by an act of
judgment. The perception of these relations did not require a
Page 10 of 26
Introduction
new sense impression. Only subsequently, possibly motivated

by his commitment to the immateriality of the soul, did Reid
explicitly reject the view that sensations were arranged
spatially and arrived at the belief that the primary qualities of
external bodies were detected by direct acts of perception.
With this in (p.10) mind, Grandi offers an explanation of why
the Scottish philosopher John Fearn (1768–1837) interpreted
Reid’s philosophy as rejecting the idea that sensations were
extended. According to Grandi, Fearn developed this reading
of Reid in order to avoid making the soul extended and thus
material, and also to avoid Hume’s scepticism on the soul’s
existence.
The belief in a providential God as the architect of the natural

constitution of the mind and of the natural world was a central
feature of Scottish common sense philosophy. Reid argued:
Common sense and reason have both one author; that

almighty Author, in all whose other works we observe
consistency, uniformity, and beauty, which charm and
delight the understanding; there must, therefore, be
some order and consistency in the human faculties, as
well as in other parts of his workmanship.
(Reid, 1764: 132)
Reid did not claim to understand the entirety of God’s purpose

for creating a natural constitution with limited freedom, but he
suggested that understanding and working toward the
perfection of this natural constitution enabled the exercise of
moral obligations to oneself, others, and God. According to
Reid, humans are “not merely a tool in the hand of the master,
but a servant, in the proper sense, who has a certain trust, and
is accountable for the discharge of it” (Reid, 1788: 309). While
Reid did not draw evidence from revealed religion in
developing this belief, he recognized, in Humean scepticism,
the theological consequences of separating human nature
from divine inspiration and intent.
In Chapter 5, “A Common Sense Response to Hume’s Moral

Atheism”, Esther Kroeker considers Reid’s response to the
non-theist implications of Hume’s moral philosophy. Kroeker
identifies three key non-theist implications of Hume’s
philosophy, which formed his moral atheism, targeted by Reid:
Hume’s claim that morality was tied to human nature and
Page 11 of 26
Introduction
autonomous from divine or religious motives; natural faculties

and human passions were not directed toward God; and God
was not (and could not be) the object of any moral discourse.
Hume suggested morality was secular and autonomous from
religious doctrines, beliefs, and motivations. Although Reid
agreed with Hume that morality was separate from divine
intervention, Reid claimed that the standard of morality was
not necessarily relative to human nature or divorced from
examples in revealed religion. Kroeker argues that Reid’s
treatment of moral evaluations sought to undermine Hume’s
denial of the existence of a benevolent God. In doing so,
Kroeker shows the ways in which Reid explicitly considered
his moral philosophy as an answer to Hume’s moral atheism.
The systematic rejection of the Ideal Theory and Hume’s

philosophy in the Aberdeen Philosophical Society was well
established when James Beattie (p.11) (1735–1803) joined
the “Wise Club” after his appointment to Professor of Moral
Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College in 1760. In Chapter
6, “The Common Sense of a Poet”, R. J. W. Mills examines
Beattie’s contribution to the philosophy of common sense in
his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) as a
different kind of response to Hume’s philosophy. Mills
documents that Beattie distinguished himself as a poet, and
his unanticipated venture into moral philosophy, which later
resulted in his Essay, originated from debate in the Aberdeen
Philosophical Society. But Beattie’s membership to the “Scotch
school”, as Mills argues, is problematic. Unlike Reid,
Campbell, and Gerard, Beattie’s version of common sense did
not examine the anatomy of the mind. He did not restrain his
assault on Humean scepticism in targeting Hume’s character.
Beattie’s inclination toward literature, which resembled
Addison’s notion of morality, and his deep commitment to
defending Christian religious principles meaningfully,
distanced his moral thought from that of his peers in the
“Scotch school”.
The chapters discussed thus far show the ways in which Reid
and Beattie, as exemplars of the “Scotch school”, challenged
Humean scepticism as the most prominent example of the
Ideal Theory in Enlightened Scotland. In Chapter 7, “Hume
and the Common Sense Philosophers”, James Harris discusses
the extent to which Hume responded to Reid and philosophers
associated with the Scottish “school” of common sense. Hume
famously called the “Advertisement” he wrote for the 1777
Page 12 of 26
Introduction
edition of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding “a

compleat answer” to the oppositional writings of Reid and
Beattie. According to Harris, what he meant was that the
Enquiry answers unfair criticisms aimed at his Treatise (1739–
40). Harris addresses the question of how exactly the Enquiry
answered those criticisms. Harris argues that it clarified the
nature of Hume’s scepticism, and, in particular, explained that
Hume’s scepticism did not affect everyday life, which common
sense theorists had claimed. What Hume’s common sense
critics failed to understand, as Harris shows, was that Hume
sought to make a complete break between his brand of
mitigated scepticism and ancient philosophical scepticism.
Humean scepticism was not a way of life, and not a route to
the summum bonum, according to Harris. The dispute
between Hume and the common sense philosophers shows the
difficulty that Hume’s contemporaries had in understanding
that he had completely abandoned the ancient conception of
philosophy as medicina mentis.
Common sense philosophers were not the first to identify their

collective use of this philosophical system as a distinct school
of thought. In Chapter 8, “The ‘New Empire of Common
Sense’”, Paul Wood recovers the historical reception of
common sense philosophy in Britain by tracing the birth of the
Scottish “school” of common sense with particular attention to
Joseph Priestley’s famous criticism (p.12) of Reid, James
Oswald, and James Beattie. Wood’s chapter builds upon the
earlier research of James Fieser, Robin Mills, and Mark
Towsey by examining previously neglected manuscripts from
critics such as the English Catholic Joseph Berington (1743–
1827) and the Irish Protestant Philip Skelton (1707–87).26
Wood argues that it was Berington rather than Priestley who
was the first critic to claim that the appeal to common sense
was a distinctive feature of the “Scotch school” of philosophy.
In this deeply researched chapter on critical assessments of
these Scots, Wood shows that Reid was widely acknowledged
to be the founder and most accomplished exponent of the
“school”. Beattie and Oswald in contrast were generally
dismissed as being derivative thinkers whose ill-conceived
notions of common sense threatened to subvert the rational
belief in Christianity. These contemporary criticisms of Reid,
Oswald, and Beattie affected the next generation of common
sense philosophers at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Page 13 of 26
Introduction
Late eighteenth-century criticisms of the “Scotch school” did

not go unnoticed among Scottish moralists. Of Reid’s
intellectual disciples, Dugald Stewart defended the use of
Scottish common sense philosophy as Professor of Moral
Philosophy from 1785 to 1810.27 In the ninth and final chapter,
“Dugald Stewart and the Legacy of Common Sense in the
Scottish Enlightenment”, C. B. Bow explores the ways in which
Stewart contributed to the endurance of Scottish common
sense philosophy during two transitional periods in Scottish
intellectual culture. Bow discusses Stewart’s enrichment of
Reid’s philosophy by developing a modern system of moral
education during an age of revolutionary change following the
British reception of French revolutionary principles. Unlike
Reid, who never published a supplemental prospectus or
outline for his courses at Aberdeen and Glasgow, Stewart’s
“didactic eloquence” reached a wider audience beyond his
classroom. In the preface to his final publication, Stewart
identified that his readers included “many individuals, not only
from England and the United States of America, but not a few
from France, Switzerland, the north of Germany, and other
parts of Europe” (Stewart, 1828: v). In Scottish contexts,
Stewart’s system of moral education diffused his version of
common sense philosophy among prominent figures of the
Scottish Whig party and contributors to the Edinburgh Review
at the dawn of this new age. The second section of Chapter 9
turns to Stewart’s defence of Scottish common sense
philosophy in response to the early nineteenth-century
Scottish reception of German Idealism. (p.13) This objective
appeared in Stewart’s Dissertation Exhibiting a General View
of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political
Philosophy (1815–21) as a supplement to the Encyclopedia
Britannica. In tracing the development of modern philosophy
Stewart suggested reasons why he believed Scottish common
sense philosophy was superior to Immanuel Kant’s “Critical
Idealism” and his belief that Kant’s response to Hume in
treating “causation” lacked originality. Considered by many to
be the “Scotian Plato”, Scottish common sense philosophy
flourished under the care of Stewart during two of the most
transitional moments in the final decades of the Scottish
Enlightenment.
Following Stewart’s death in 1828, the Scottish philosopher

Thomas Carlyle claimed that “Dugald Stewart is dead, and
British Philosophy with him” (Carlyle, 1828: 396). The later
Page 14 of 26
Introduction
writings of nineteenth-century Scottish philosophers, including

Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856), James Ferrier (1808–56), J.
S. Mill (1806–73), and Alexander Bain (1818–1903) among
others, suggest that the Scottish philosophical tradition did
not fade into obscurity.28 The objectives of nineteenth-century
Scottish philosophers, however, did not resemble Stewart’s
attempt to defend, refine, and sustain the legacy of the
“Scotch school”. The emergence of Scottish Idealism and
Utilitarianism, which staunchly criticized the “Scotch school”
and, in particular, Hamilton’s “Natural Realism” as a response
to Humean scepticism, suggested an end to the use of common
sense philosophy at Scottish universities and as a method of
improvement in nineteenth-century Scottish intellectual
culture.29
While nineteenth-century Scottish philosophers criticized the

“Scotch school” in adapting versions of imported philosophical
systems, the transnational diffusion of common sense
philosophy renewed its use on either side of the Atlantic.
Significant changes to Scottish common sense philosophy, like
German Idealism and Utilitarianism in nineteenth-century
Scotland, accompanied the use of this philosophical system in
different national contexts. The translations of Reid and
Stewart’s works by Pierre Paul Royer-Collard (1763–1845),
Victor Cousin (1792–1867), and Théodore Jouffroy (1796–
1842), for example, influenced the development of a distinct
French “school” of common sense philosophy.30 Dugald
Stewart expressed pleasure in reading “the very elegant
translation by M. Jouffroy of my Outlines of Moral Philosophy,
preceded by a long introduction full of original and important
matter” (Stewart, 1828: xii). Cousin’s inclusion of (p.14)
“large extracts from the same work [Outlines], comprising
nearly the whole of” Fragments Philosophiques (1826)
encouraged Stewart’s optimism for the future of common
sense philosophy “in some other countries as well as my
own” (Stewart, 1828: xii).31 But the dominance of German
Idealism in continental Europe throughout the nineteenth
century affected the reception and development of French and
German versions of common sense in an attempt to reconcile
these competing systems.
The diaspora of Scottish philosophers throughout the British

Atlantic world did not encounter this problem in their use of
common sense philosophy. Their efforts to reconstruct the
Scottish philosophical tradition from abroad merit an
Page 15 of 26
Introduction
important place in the legacy of common sense philosophy.32

James McCosh, who served as the President of the College of
New Jersey (now Princeton University) between 1868 and
1888, authored the best example of reconstructing an
intellectual history of common sense philosophy. His
exploratory intellectual biography, The Scottish Philosophy
(1875), of prominent Scottish Enlightenment thinkers
(including Hutcheson, Turnbull, Reid, James Oswald, John
Witherspoon, Beattie, Stewart, and Hamilton) revealed an
ambition to pave a future path for a new version of common
sense philosophy in America. In doing so, McCosh’s philosophy
departed from the Scottish “school” of common sense in
significant ways.33 In explaining the continuities and
discontinuities of his philosophy with the original “Scotch
school”, McCosh wrote:
I am represented as being of the Scottish school of

philosophy. I adhere to it in one important principle: I
believe that the truths of mental philosophy are to be
discovered by a careful observation and induction of
what passes in the mind. But in other respects I differ
from the Scottish school. I profess to get my philosophy
from the study of the human mind directly, and not from
the teaching of others. The Scottish school maintains
that we know only the qualities of things; I say we know
the things themselves. So I call my philosophy Realism,
and by help of a few obvious distinctions I hope to
establish it. Hamilton makes our knowledge relative; I
make it positive.
(McCosh, 1888: 29–30)
Like other Scottish philosophers teaching in different national

contexts during the nineteenth century, McCosh’s
reconstruction of “the Scottish philosophy” critically adapted
Scottish common sense philosophy to the different
circumstances in which he lived. In recovering the ways in
which Scottish common (p.15) sense philosophy originally
developed in response to the Ideal Theory during the long
eighteenth century in Britain, this volume takes an important
step toward a more complete understanding of “the Scottish
philosophy” in the age of Enlightenment.
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Page 16 of 26
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Notes:
This book owes a debt of gratitude to the authors of the
various essays, the British Society for the History of
Philosophy and especially Pauline Phemister, Paul Wood’s
valued guidance, and to the support of Eleanor Collins and
Oxford University Press.
(1) See Grave, 1960; Davie, 1973; Broadie, 2009.
(2) See Ahnert, 2015.
Page 23 of 26
Another random document with
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the Nile, has also done great damage on the plantations of the
Sudan, a thousand miles south of Alexandria. It is said that in one
year it destroyed more than ten million dollars’ worth of cotton and
that hundreds of the smaller farmers were ruined. The government
has been doing all it can to wipe out the plague, but is working under
great disadvantages. The Egyptian Mohammedans are fatalists,
looking upon such things as the boll weevil as a judgment of God
and believing they can do nothing to avert the evil. Consequently, the
government had to inaugurate a system of forced labour. It made the
boys and men of the cotton region turn out by the thousands to kill
the worms under the superintendence of officials. The results were
excellent, and as those who were forced into the work were well paid
the farmers are beginning to appreciate what has been done for
them.
The government helps the cotton planters in other ways. Its
agricultural department sends out selected seed for planting a few
thousand acres to cotton, contracting with each man who takes it
that the government will buy his seed at a price above that of the
market. The seed coming in from that venture is enough to plant
many more thousands of acres, and this is distributed at cost to such
of the farmers as want it. More than one quarter of all seed used has
latterly been supplied in this way.
The government has also induced the planters to use artificial
fertilizers. It began this some years ago, when it was able to
distribute thirty thousand dollars’ worth of chemical fertilizer, and the
demand so increased that within a few years more than ten times as
much was distributed annually.
CHAPTER IV
THROUGH OLD EGYPT TO CAIRO
On my way to Cairo I have taken a run through the delta, crossing

Lower Egypt to the Suez Canal and returning through the Land of
Goshen.
The soil is as rich and the grass is as green now as it was when
Joseph picked out this land as the best in Egypt for his famine-
stricken father Jacob. Fat cattle by the hundreds grazed upon the
fields, camels with loads of hay weighing about a ton upon their
backs staggered along the black roads. Turbaned Egyptians rode
donkeys through the fields, and the veiled women of this Moslem
land crowded about the train at the villages. On one side a great
waste of dazzling yellow sand came close to the edge of the green
fields, and we passed grove after grove of date-palm trees holding
their heads proudly in the air, and shaking their fan-like leaves to
every passing breeze. They seemed to whisper a requiem over the
dead past of this oldest of the old lands of the world.
The sakka, or water carrier, fills his pigskin bag at the river, and then peddles it
out, with the cry: “O! may God recompense me,” announcing his passage through
the streets of village or town.
Up and down the slippery banks of the Nile goes the centuries-long procession
of fellah women bearing head burdens—water-jars or baskets of earth from
excavations.
As we neared Cairo and skirted the edge of the desert, away off to
the right against the hazy horizon rose three ghost-like cones of gray
out of the golden sand. These were the Pyramids, and the steam
engine of the twentieth century whistled out a terrible shriek as we
came in sight of them. To the left were the Mokattam Hills, with the
citadel which Saladin built upon them, while to the right flowed the
great broad-bosomed Nile, the mother of the land of Egypt, whose
earth-laden waters have been creating soil throughout the ages, and
which to-day are still its source of life.
Egypt, in the words of Herodotus, is the gift of the Nile. This whole
rainless country was once a bed of sterile sand so bleak and bare
that not a blade of grass nor a shrub of cactus would grow upon it.
This mighty river, rising in the heights of Africa and cutting its way
through rocks and hills, has brought down enough sediment to form
the tillable area of Egypt. South of Cairo, for nearly a thousand miles
along its banks, there extends a strip of rich black earth which is only
from three to nine miles wide. Below the city the land spreads out in
a delta shaped somewhat like the segment of a circle, the radii of
which jut out from Cairo, while the blue waters of the Mediterranean
edge its arc. This narrow strip and fan form the arable land of Egypt.
The soil is nowhere more than thirty-five feet deep. It rests on a bed
of sand. On each side of it are vast wastes of sand and rock, with not
a spot of green to relieve the ceaseless glare of the sun. The green
goes close to the edge of the desert, where it stops as abruptly as
though it were cut off by a gardener. Nearly everywhere up the Nile
from Cairo the strip is so narrow that you can stand at one side of
the valley and see clear across it.
Thus, in one sense, Egypt is the leanest country in the world, but it
is the fattest in the quality of the food that nature gives it. Through
the ages it has had one big meal every year. At the inundation of the
Nile, for several months the waters spread over the land and were
allowed to stand there until they dropped the rich, black fertilizing
sediment brought down from the African mountains. This sediment
has produced from two to three crops a year for Egypt through the
centuries and for a long time was the sole manure that the land had.
The hundreds of thousands of cattle, donkeys, camels, and sheep
that feed off the soil give nothing back to it, for their droppings are
gathered up by the peasant women and girls, patted into shape, and
dried for use as fuel. Until late years the only manure that was used
in any part of the country was that of pigeons and chickens, or the
crumbled ruins of ancient towns, which, lying through thousands of
years, have become rubbish full of fertilizing properties. Recently, as
I have said, the use of artificial fertilizers has been encouraged with
excellent results.
The irrigation of Egypt is now conducted on scientific lines. The
water is not allowed to spread over the country as it was years ago,
but the arable area is cut up by canals, and there are immense
irrigating works in the delta, to manage which during the inundation
hundreds of thousands of men are required. Just at the point of the
delta, about twelve miles above Cairo, is a great dam, or barrage,
that raises the waters of the Nile into a vast canal from which they
flow over the fan-like territory of Lower Egypt. All through Egypt one
sees men scooping the water up in baskets from one level to
another, and everywhere he finds the buffalo, the camel, or donkey
turning the wheels that operate the crude apparatus for getting the
water out of the river and onto the land.
But let me put into a nutshell the kernel of information we need to
understand this wonderful country. We all know how Egypt lies on
the map of northeastern Africa, extending a thousand miles or more
southward from the Mediterranean Sea. The total area, including the
Nubian Desert, the region between the Nile and the Red Sea, and
the Sinai Peninsula, is more than seven times as large as the State
of New York, but the real Egypt, that is, the cultivated and settled
portion comprising the Nile valley and delta, lacks just four square
miles of being as large as our State of Maryland. Of this portion, fully
one third is taken up in swamps, lakes, and the surface of the Nile,
as well as in canals, roads, and plantations of dates, so that the
Egypt of farms that actually supports the people is only about as big
as Massachusetts. Though this contains little more than eight
thousand square miles, nevertheless its population is nearly one
eighth of ours. Crowd every man, woman, and child who lives in the
United States into four states the size of Maryland, and you have
some idea of the density of the population here. Belgium, that hive of
industry, with its mines of iron and coal and its myriad factories, has
only about six hundred people per square mile; and China, the
leviathan of Asia, has less than two hundred and fifty. Little Egypt is
supporting something like one thousand per square mile of its arable
area; and nearly all of them are crowded down near the
Mediterranean.
Of these people, about nine tenths are Mohammedans, one
twelfth Christians, Copts, and others; and less than one half of one
per cent. Jews. Among the Christians are many Greeks of the
Orthodox Church and Italian Roman Catholics from the countries on
the Mediterranean Sea.
Nature has much to do with forming the character and physique of
the men who live close to her, and in Egypt the unvarying soil,
desert, sky, and river, make the people who have settled in the
country become, in the course of a few generations, just like the
Egyptians themselves. Scientists say that the Egyptian peasantry of
to-day is the same as in the past, and that this is true even of the
cattle. Different breeds have been imported from time to time only to
change into the Egyptian type, and the cow to-day is the same as
that pictured in the hieroglyphics of the tombs made thousands of
years ago. The Egyptian cow is like the Jersey in shape and form
save that its neck is not quite so delicate and its horns are a trifle
shorter. Its colour is a rich red. Its milk is full of oil, and its butter is
yellow. It has been asserted that the Jersey cow originally came from
Egypt, and was taken to the Island of Jersey by the Phœnicians in
some of their voyages ages ago.
But to return to the Nile, the source of existence of this great
population. Next to the Mississippi, with the Missouri, it is the longest
river of the world. The geographers put its length at from thirty-seven
hundred to four thousand miles. It is a hundred miles or so longer
than the Amazon, and during the last seventeen hundred miles of its
course not a single branch comes in to add to its volume. For most
of the way it flows through a desert of rock and sand as dry as the
Sahara. In the summer many of the winds that sweep over Cairo are
like the blast from a furnace, and in Upper Egypt a dead dog thrown
into the fields will turn to dust without an offensive odour. The dry air
sucks the moisture out of the carcass so that there is no corruption.
Nearly all of the cultivated lands lie along the Nile banks and
depend for their supply of water on the rise of the river, caused by
the rains in the region around its sources. When the Nile is in flood
the waters are coloured dark brown by the silt brought down from the
high lands of Abyssinia. When it is low, as in June, they are green,
because of the growth of water plants in the upper parts of the river.
At flood time the water is higher than the land and the fields are
protected by banks or dikes along the river. If these banks break, the
fields are flooded and the crops destroyed.
We are accustomed to look upon Egypt as a very hot country. This
is not so. The greater part of it lies just outside the tropics, so that it
has a warm climate and a sub-tropical plant life. The hottest month is
June and the coldest is January. Ice sometimes forms on shallow
pools in the delta, but there is no snow, although hail storms occur
occasionally, with very large stones. There is no rain except near the
coast and a little near Cairo. Fogs are common in January and
February and it is frequently damp in the cultivated tracts.
For centuries Egypt has been in the hands of other nations. The
Mohammedan Arabs and the Ottoman Turks have been bleeding her
since their conquest. Greece once fed off her. Rome ate up her
substance in the days of the Cæsars and she has had to stake the
wildest extravagancies of the khedives of the past. It must be
remembered that Egypt is almost altogether agricultural, and that all
of the money spent in and by it must come from what the people can
raise on the land. The khedives and officials have piped, and Egypt’s
farmers have had to pay.
It was not long before my second visit to Egypt that the
wastefulness and misrule of her officials had practically put her in the
hands of a receiver. She had gone into debt for half a billion dollars
to European creditors—English, French, German, and Spanish—and
England and France had arranged between them to pull her out.
Later France withdrew from the agreement and Great Britain
undertook the job alone.
At that time the people were ground down to the earth and had
barely enough for mere existence. Taxes were frightfully high and
wages pitifully low. The proceeds from the crops went mostly to
Turkey and to the bankers of Europe who had obtained the bonds
given by the government to foreigners living in Egypt. In fact, they
had as hard lives as in the days of the most tyrannical of the
Pharaohs.
But since that time the British have had a chance to show what
they could do, irrigation projects and railroad schemes have been
put through, cotton has come into its own, and I see to-day a far
more prosperous land and people than I did at the end of the last
century.
CHAPTER V
FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS
For the last month I have been travelling through the farms of the
Nile valley. I have visited many parts of the delta, a region where the
tourist seldom stops, and have followed the narrow strip that borders
the river for several hundred miles above Cairo.
The delta is the heart of Egypt. It has the bulk of the population,
most of the arable land, the richest soil, and the biggest crops. While
it is one of the most thickly settled parts of the world, it yields more to
the acre than any other region on earth, and its farm lands are the
most valuable. I am told that the average agricultural yield for all
Europe nets a profit of thirty-five dollars per acre, but that of Lower
Egypt amounts to a great deal more. Some lands produce so much
that they are renting for fifty dollars an acre, and there are instances
where one hundred dollars is paid.
I saw in to-day’s newspapers an advertisement of an Egyptian
land company, announcing an issue of two and one half million
dollars’ worth of stock. The syndicate says in its prospectus that it
expects to buy five thousand acres of land at “the low rate of two
hundred dollars per acre,” and that by spending one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars it can make that land worth four hundred
dollars per acre within three years. Some of this land would now
bring from two hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars per acre,
and is renting for twenty dollars per acre per annum. The tract lies
fifty miles north of Cairo and is planted in cotton, wheat, and barley.
Such estates as the above do not often come into the market,
however. Most of Egypt is in small farms, and little of it is owned by
foreigners. Six sevenths of the farms belong to the Egyptians, and
there are more than a million native land owners. Over one million
acres are in tracts of from five to twenty acres each. Many are even
less than an acre in size. The number of proprietors is increasing
every year and the fellaheen, or fellahs, are eager to possess land of
their own. It used to be that the Khedive had enormous estates, but
when the British Government took possession some of the khedivial
acres came to it. These large holdings have been divided and have
been sold to the fellaheen on long-time and easy payments. Many
who then bought these lands have paid for them out of their crops
and are now rich. As it is to-day there are but a few thousand
foreigners who own real estate in the valley of the Nile.
The farmers who live here in the delta have one of the garden
spots of the globe to cultivate. The Nile is building up more rich soil
every year, and the land, if carefully handled, needs but little
fertilization. It is yielding two or three crops every twelve months and
is seldom idle. Under the old system of basin irrigation the fields lay
fallow during the hot months of the summer, but the canals and
dams that have now been constructed enable much of the country to
have water all the year round, so that as soon as one crop is
harvested another is planted.
The primitive norag is still seen in Egypt threshing the grain and cutting up the
straw for fodder. It moves on small iron wheels or thin circular plates and is drawn
in a circle over the wheat or barley.
The Egyptian agricultural year has three seasons. Cereal crops are sown in
November and harvested in May; the summer crops are cotton, sugar, and rice;
the fall crops, sown in July, are corn, millet, and vegetables.
The mud of the annual inundations is no longer sufficient fertilizer for the Nile
farm. The fellaheen often use pigeon manure on their lands and there are
hundreds of pigeon towers above the peasants’ mud huts.
The whole of the delta is one big farm dotted with farm villages
and little farm cities. There are mud towns everywhere, and there are
half-a-dozen big agricultural centres outside the cities of Alexandria
and Cairo. Take, for instance, Tanta, where I am at this writing. It is a
good-sized city and is supported by the farmers. It is a cotton market
and it has a great fair, now and then, to which the people come from
all over Egypt to buy and sell. A little to the east of it is Zagazig,
which is nearly as large, while farther north, upon the east branch of
the Nile, is Mansura, another cotton market, with a rich farming
district about it. Damietta and Rosetta, at the two mouths of the Nile,
and Damanhur, which lies west of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, not
far from Lake Edku, are also big places. There are a number of
towns ranging in population from five to ten thousand.
The farms are nothing like those of the United States. We should
have to change the look of our landscape to imitate them. There are
no fences, no barns, and no haystacks. The country is as bare of
such things as an undeveloped prairie. The only boundaries of the
estates are little mud walls; and the fields are divided into patches
some of which are no bigger than a tablecloth. Each patch has
furrows so made that the water from the canals can irrigate every
inch.
The whole country is cut up by canals. There are large waterways
running along the branches of the Nile, and smaller ones connecting
with them, to such an extent that the face of the land is covered with
a lacework veil of little streams from which the water can be let in
and out. The draining of the farms is quite as important as watering,
and the system of irrigation is perfect, inasmuch as it brings the Nile
to every part of the country without letting it flood and swamp the
lands.
Few people have any idea of the work the Egyptians have to do in
irrigating and taking care of their farms. The task of keeping these
basins in order is herculean. As the Nile rushes in, the embankments
are watched as the Dutch watch the dikes of Holland. They are
patrolled by the village headmen and the least break is filled with
stalks of millet and earth. The town officials have the right to call out
the people to help, and no one refuses. If the Nile gets too high it
sometimes overflows into the settlements and the mud huts crumble.
During the flood the people go out in boats from village to village.
The donkeys, buffaloes, and bullocks live on the dikes, as do also
the goats, sheep, and camels.
The people sow their crops as soon as the floods subside. Harvest
comes on within a few months, and unless they have some means of
irrigation, in addition to the Nile floods, they must wait until the
following year before they can plant again. With a dam like the one
at Aswan, the water supply can be so regulated that they can grow
crops all the year round. This is already the condition in a great part
of the delta, and it is planned to make the same true of the farms of
Upper Egypt.
As for methods of raising the water from the river and canals and
from one level to another, they vary from the most modern of steam
pumps and windmills to the clumsy sakieh and shadoof, which are
as old as Egypt itself. All the large land owners are now using steam
pumps. There are many estates, owned by syndicates, which are
irrigated by this means, and there are men who are buying portable
engines and pumps and hiring them out to the smaller farmers in
much the same way that threshing machines are rented in the United
States and Canada. Quite a number of American windmills are
already installed. Indeed, it seems to me almost the whole pumping
of the Nile valley might be done by the wind. The breezes from the
desert as strong as those from the sea sweep across the valley with
such regularity that wind pumps could be relied upon to do efficient
work.
At present, however, water is raised in Egypt mostly by its cheap
man power or by animals. Millions of gallons are lifted by the
shadoof. This is a long pole balanced on a support. From one end of
the pole hangs a bucket, and from the other a heavy weight of clay
or stone, about equal to the weight of the bucket when it is full of
water. A man pulls the bucket down into the water, and by the help of
the weight on the other end, raises it and empties it into a canal
higher up. He does this all day long for a few cents, and it is
estimated that he can in ten days lift enough water to irrigate an acre
of corn or cotton. At this rate there is no doubt it could be done much
cheaper by pumps.
Another rude irrigation machine found throughout the Nile valley
from Alexandria to Khartum is the sakieh, which is operated by a
blindfolded bullock, buffalo, donkey, or camel. It consists of a vertical
wheel with a string of buckets attached to its rim. As the wheel turns
round in the water the buckets dip and fill, and as it comes up they
discharge their contents into a canal. This vertical wheel is moved by
another wheel set horizontally, the two running in cogs, and the latter
being turned by some beast of burden. There is usually a boy, a girl,
or an old man, who sits on the shaft and drives the animal round.
The screech of these sakiehs is loud in the land and almost breaks
the ear drums of the tourists who come near them. I remember a
remark that one of the Justices of our Supreme Court made while we
were stopping together at a hotel at Aswan with one of these water-
wheels in plain sight and hearing. He declared he should like to give
an appropriation to Egypt large enough to enable the people to oil
every sakieh up and down the Nile valley. I doubt, however, whether
the fellaheen would use the oil, if they had it, for they say that the
blindfolded cattle will not turn the wheel when the noise stops.
I also saw half-naked men scooping up the water in baskets and
pouring it into the little ditches, into which the fields are cut up.
Sometimes men will spend not only days, but months on end in this
most primitive method of irrigation.
The American farmer would sneer at the old-fashioned way in
which these Egyptians cultivate the soil. He would tell them that they
were two thousand years behind the time, and, still, if he were
allowed to take their places he would probably ruin the country and
himself. Most of the Egyptian farming methods are the result of long
experience. In ploughing, the land is only scratched. This is because
the Nile mud is full of salts, and the silt from Abyssinia is of such a
nature that the people have to be careful not to plough so deep that
the salts are raised from below and the crop thereby ruined. In many
cases there is no ploughing at all. The seed is sown on the soft mud
after the water is taken off, and pressed into it with a wooden roller
or trodden in by oxen or buffaloes.
AFRICA
Last of the continents to be conquered by the explorers, and last to be divided
up among the land-hungry powers, is now slowly yielding to the white man’s
civilization.
Where ploughs are used they are just the same as those of five
thousand years ago. I have seen carvings on the tombs of the
ancient Egyptians representing the farm tools used then, and they
are about the same as those I see in use to-day. The average plough
consists of a pole about six feet long fastened to a piece of wood
bent inward at an acute angle. The end piece, which is shod with
iron, does the ploughing. The pole is hitched to a buffalo or ox by
means of a yoke, and the farmer walks along behind the plough
holding its single handle, which is merely a stick set almost upright
into the pole. The harrow of Egypt is a roller provided with iron
spikes. Much of the land is dug over with a mattock-like hoe.
Most of the grain here is cut with sickles or pulled out by the roots.
Wheat and barley are threshed by laying them inside a ring of well-
pounded ground and driving over them a sledge that rests on a roller
with sharp semicircular pieces of iron set into it. It is drawn by oxen,
buffaloes, or camels. Sometimes the grain is trodden out by the feet
of the animals without the use of the rollers, and sometimes there
are wheels of stone between the sled-runners which aid in hulling
the grain. Peas and beans are also threshed in this way. The grain is
winnowed by the wind. The ears are spread out on the threshing
floor and the grains pounded off with clubs or shelled by hand. Much
of the corn is cut and laid on the banks of the canal until the people
have time to husk and shell it.
The chief means of carrying farm produce from one place to
another is on bullocks and camels. The camel is taken out into the
corn field while the harvesting is going on. As the men cut the corn
they tie it up into great bundles and hang one bundle on each side of
his hump. The average camel can carry about one fifth as much as
one horse hitched to a wagon or one tenth as much as a two-horse
team. Hay, straw, and green clover are often taken from the fields to
the markets on camels. Such crops are put up in a baglike network
that fits over the beast’s hump and makes him look like a hay or
straw-stack walking off upon legs. Some of the poorer farmers use
donkeys for such purposes, and these little animals may often be
seen going along the narrow roads with bags of grain balanced upon
their backs.
I have always looked upon Egypt as devoted mostly to sugar and
cotton. I find it a land of wheat and barley as well. It has also a big
yield of clover and corn. The delta raises almost all of the cotton and
some of the sugar. Central and Upper Egypt are grain countries, and
in the central part Indian and Kaffir corn are the chief summer crops.
Kaffir corn is, to a large extent, the food of the poorer fellaheen, and
is also eaten by the Bedouins who live in the desert along the edges
of the Nile valley. Besides a great deal of hay, Egypt produces some
of the very best clover, which is known as bersine. It has such rich
feeding qualities that a small bundle of it is enough to satisfy a
camel.
This is also a great stock country. The Nile valley is peppered with
camels, donkeys, buffaloes, and sheep, either watched by herders or
tied to stakes, grazing on clover and other grasses. No animal is
allowed to run at large, for there are no fences and the cattle thief is
everywhere in evidence. The fellaheen are as shrewd as any people
the world over, so a strayed animal would be difficult to recover.
Much of the stock is watched by children. I have seen buffaloes
feeding in the green fields with naked brown boys sitting on their
backs and whipping them this way and that if they attempt to get into
the crops adjoining. The sheep and the goats are often watched by
the children or by men who are too old to do hard work. The
donkeys, camels, and cows are usually tied to stakes and can feed
only as far as their ropes will reach.
The sheep of Egypt are fine. Many of them are of the fat-tailed
variety, some brown and some white. The goats and sheep feed
together, there being some goats in almost every flock of sheep.
The donkey is the chief riding animal. It is used by men, women,
and children, and a common sight is the veiled wife of one of these
Mohammedan farmers seated astride one of the little fellows with her
feet high up on its sides in the short stirrups. But few camels are
used for riding except by the Bedouins out in the desert, and it is
only in the cities that many wheeled vehicles are to be seen.
Suppose we go into one of the villages and see how these
Egyptian farmers live. The towns are collections of mud huts with
holes in the walls for windows. They are scattered along narrow
roadways at the mercy of thick clouds of dust. The average hut is so
low that one can look over its roof when seated on a camel. It
seldom contains more than one or two rooms, and usually has a little
yard outside where the children and the chickens roll about in the
dust and where the donkey is sometimes tied.
Above some of the houses are towers of mud with holes around
their sides. These towers are devoted to pigeons, which are kept by
the hundreds and which are sold in the markets as we sell chickens.
The pigeons furnish a large part of the manure of Egypt both for
gardens and fields. The manure is mixed with earth and scattered
over the soil.
Almost every village has its mosque, or church, and often, in
addition, the tomb of some saint or holy man who lived there in the
past. The people worship at such tombs, believing that prayers made
there avail more than those made out in the fields or in their own
huts.
There are no water works in the ordinary country village. If the
locality is close to the Nile the drinking and washing water is brought
from there to the huts by the women, and if not it comes from the
village well. It is not difficult to get water by digging down a few feet
anywhere in the Nile valley; and every town has its well, which is
usually shaded by palm trees. It is there that the men gather about
and gossip at night, and there the women come to draw water and
carry it home upon their heads.
The farmers’ houses have no gardens about them, and no flowers
or other ornamental decoration. The surroundings of the towns are
squalid and mean, for the peasants have no comforts in our sense of
the word. They have but little furniture inside their houses. Many of
them sleep on the ground or on mats, and many wear the same
clothing at night that they wear in the daytime. Out in the country

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Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment

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(p.i) Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment

(p.ii) Mind Association occasional Series

(p.iii) Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment

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Art and Belief

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Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment

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Abstract and Keywords

This volume of essays considers the philosophical and

importance of this philosophical system, which was widely

Scottish metaphysicians and moralists have left their

In these ways common sense philosophy informed the

Thomas Reid popularized prominent features of this

sense developed a viable alternative to Humean scepticism

René Descartes (1596–1650) was considered by Reid to be the

metaphysics, epistemology, and morals.6 John Marshall