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 Mary Shepherd: A Guide
Deborah Boyle

https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190090326.001.0001
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Subject: History of Western Philosophy

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Boyle, Deborah, author.

Title: Mary Shepherd : a guide / Deborah Boyle.

Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, 2023. |

Series: Oxford guides to philosophy series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

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ISBN 9780190090333 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190090326 (hardback) |

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Subjects: LCSH: Shepherd, Mary, Lady, 1777–1847. | Causation. |

Perception (Philosophy) | Philosophy, English—19th century.

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For my father, Terry, and in memory of my mother, Sheila
 Mary Shepherd: A Guide
Deborah Boyle

https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190090326.001.0001
Published: 2022 Online ISBN: 9780190090364 Print ISBN: 9780190090326

FRONT MATTER

Acknowledgments 
Published: December 2022

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Subject: History of Western Philosophy

The recent interest and enthusiasm among historians of philosophy regarding Shepherd’s work have made
this book possible in a way that might not have been the case even twenty years ago. I am very grateful to
have been able to present earlier versions of the material in this book at a variety of conferences. I am also
grateful to David Landy for inviting me to present my work on Shepherd at San Francisco State University in
2019 and to meet on Zoom with his seminar students to discuss Shepherd in 2021, to Aaron Garrett for the
opportunity to give a talk on Shepherd at Boston University in 2019, and to Manuel Fasko for inviting me to
participate in an online workshop on Shepherd and personal identity at the University of Basel in 2021. At all
these events, I bene ted immensely from the comments and questions provided by audience members and
other participants, especially Thomas Aeppli, Donald Ainslie, Martha Bolton, Olivia Brown, Annemarie
Butler, Colin Chamberlain, Patrick Connolly, Becko Copenhaver, Louise Daoust, Keota Fields, M. Folescu,
James Foster, Gordon Graham, Giovanni Grandi, Lukas Hilgert, Laura Kämpfen, Muriel Leuenberger, Alison
McIntyre, Jelscha Schmid, Lisa Shapiro, Julie Walsh, and Markus Wild. And for their generous comments on
earlier drafts of material in this book, I thank Charlotte Alderwick, Margaret Atherton, Becko Copenhaver,
Manuel Fasko, David Landy, Antonia LoLordo, Terry Meyers, Alison Peterman, Samuel Rickless, and Alison
Stone.

Some of the material in this book, especially Chapter 8, is based on work I rst presented at the Early
Modern–Saint Louis Conference and the Fifth Annual Lehigh University Philosophy Conference, both in
p. x 2017, which then developed into my paper “Mary Shepherd on Mind, Soul, and Self,” Journal of the History
of Philosophy 58, no. 1 (2020): 93–112. I thank the publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press, for permission
to reprint this material. Chapter 4 is based on “Mary Shepherd on the Meaning of ‘Life,’ ” published in the
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29, no. 2 (2021): 208–25, copyright British Society for the History
of Philosophy, available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09608788.2020.1771271. My thanks
to the society for permission to reprint. Chapter 5 draws from work I presented at the 2019 meetings of the
Canadian Philosophical Association, the Hume Society, and the International Conference on the
Enlightenment. Material in chapter 9 was rst presented in my papers “Mary Shepherd on Minds, Selves,
and the Afterlife” at the 2019 Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association and
“Lady Shepherd on Divine Creation” at the 2020 Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy Conference.

I am indebted to Peter Ohlin and Becko Copenhaver for inviting me to write this book in the rst place.
Support was provided by a sabbatical from the College of Charleston during the academic year 2020–21, as
well as by the American Philosophical Association’s Edinburgh Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh’s
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Due to the global pandemic, I was unfortunately unable to
go in person to Edinburgh, but Steve Yearley and Ben Fletcher-Watson at the Institute helped me connect
with the other fellows, many of whom were also working remotely.

Finally, this project would not have been possible without the patient support of my husband Tim and my
daughter Maura, whom I kept waiting far too many times as I told them I just needed to nish writing one
more sentence.
 Abbreviations

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CSEV Mary Shepherd, “On the Causes of Single and Erect Vision.”
Cited by page number, using the 1828 Philosophical
Magazine version.
EASP Mary Shepherd, “An Essay on the Academical or Sceptical
Philosophy.” Cited by page number of the 1827 edition.
ECHU John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Cited by book, chapter, and section.
EHU David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding. Cited by section and paragraph.
EIP Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. Cited
by essay and chapter number.
EPEU Mary Shepherd, Essays on the Perception of an External
Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of
Causation. Cited by page number of the 1827 edition.
ERCE Mary Shepherd, An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and
Effect. Cited by page number of the 1824 edition.
IHM Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, upon the
Principles of Common Sense. Cited by chapter and section.
L William Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the
Natural History of Man. 3rd ed. Cited by page number.
LMSM Mary Shepherd, “Lady Mary Shepherd’s Metaphysics.” Cited
by page number of the Fraser’s Magazine edition.
NTV George Berkeley, An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision.
Cited by section.
OLMS Mary Shepherd, “Observations by Lady Mary Shepherd on
the ‘First Lines of the Human Mind.’ ” Cited by page number
of the Parriana edition.
ONT Thomas Brown, Observations on the Nature and Tendency of
the Doctrine of Mr. Hume. 2nd ed. Cited by page number.
xii List of Abbreviations

T David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Cited by book,

part, section, and paragraph.
PHK George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of

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Human Knowledge. Cited by part and section.

Unless noted otherwise, all italics in quotations are in the orig-

inal texts.
 1

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Shepherd’s Life and Context

Mary Shepherd’s Life

Lady Mary Primrose, later Lady Mary Shepherd, was born near
Edinburgh in 1777. She was the second of six children of Neil
Primrose, 3rd Earl of Rosebery, and Mary Vincent.1 Unfortunately,
we know very little of Shepherd’s life; indeed, despite her status as a
member of the aristocracy, it seems that there is no surviving por-
trait of Shepherd as an adult. Our primary source of information
about her life is a brief memoir written years later by her daughter
Mary Elizabeth Shepherd Brandreth.2
According to the memoir, until her marriage in 1808, Shepherd
resided primarily at her family home outside Edinburgh,
Barnbougle Castle. Many wealthy families around Edinburgh sent
their daughters to the city for their education,3 but Mary and her
siblings were educated at home. Mary’s two brothers were tutored at
home by a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, which they later
attended themselves,4 while Mary and her two sisters were taught
by a “dominie,” or schoolteacher, named Pillans. Pillans taught the
sisters geography, mathematics, history, and, unusually for girls in
this period, Latin.5 Shepherd must at some point also have learned

1 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography lists Shepherd as the second of five chil-

dren, but Jennifer McRobert notes that the Primroses had a sixth child who died in in-
fancy. See Perkins, “Shepherd (née Primrose), Lady Mary (1777–​1847), Philosopher”
and McRobert, “Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation,” 9.
2 Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections of Seventy Years, 26.
3 Glover, Elite Women and Polite Society in Eighteenth-​Century Scotland, 33–​34.
4 Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections, 116 and 26.
5 Glover, Elite Women and Polite Society, 45.

Mary Shepherd. Deborah Boyle, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190090326.003.0001
2 Mary Shepherd

French, since her 1827 book shows she could read French; in late
eighteenth-​century Scotland, French was viewed as an important
component of girls’ education.6 Presumably, Shepherd would also

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have learned sewing and embroidery, music, and dancing, all im-
portant parts of a girl’s education at that time. The family attended
the local church, then part of the Calvinist Church of Scotland, and
Mary Shepherd learned Presbyterian doctrine from her tutor.7
In 1808, Shepherd married barrister Henry John Shepherd
(1783?–​1855).8 They had three children. While Shepherd and her
family made London their primary residence, she typically left
London in the autumn, going to Cheltenham, Tunbridge Wells,
or Brighton, all popular holiday destinations in early nineteenth-​
century England. Her comings and goings were duly noted in the
society columns of British newspapers throughout the 1810s, 20s,
and 30s, as is her attendance at balls, concerts, and dinner parties.
Her daughter described the intellectual circles in which Shepherd
also moved, writing that her parents “gathered in those days both
the scientific and the literary sides of the learned world, into easy
and intimate intercourse.”9 Their social circle ultimately included
geologist Charles Lyell; Cambridge philosopher of science William
Whewell; mathematician Mary Somerville; minister, writer, and
early editor of the Edinburgh Review Sydney Smith; economist
Thomas Malthus; political economist David Ricardo; and Charles
Babbage, inventor of the analytical engine and difference engine,

6
Glover, Elite Women and Polite Society, 32.
7
Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections, 27. McRobert notes that
Mary’s father, as a Scottish nobleman, would have been expected to support the local
Presbyterian parish (“Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation,” 23).
8 The marriage record of Mary Shepherd and Henry John Shepherd lists her as a

member of the parish of St. George’s Hanover Square, but they married in the Anglican
church of St. Clement Danes in London (marriage license no. 749, recorded April 11,
1808; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, City of Westminster Archives
Centre London). The entry for Henry John Shepherd at the History of Parliament online
says that they eloped; see Thorne, “Shepherd, Henry John.”
9 Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections, 41–​42.
 Shepherd’s Life and Context 3

early computers.10 Another notable friend of Shepherd was Mary

Shelley.11
With this busy family and social life, when did Shepherd find

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time to write her philosophical treatises? We know little about the
circumstances of the writing and publishing of her books. Brandreth
mentions that her mother wrote “metaphysical disquisitions” about
Hume and Priestley before she was married,12 contrasting these
with the published books, which Brandreth says “were written
some years later” and published with Henry John Shepherd’s en-
couragement.13 The 1824 book, An Essay upon the Relation of Cause
and Effect (henceforth abbreviated as ERCE) was published anon-
ymously; the 1827 book, Essays on the Perception of an External
Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of
Causation (henceforth abbreviated as EPEU) was published under
her name.14 An earlier book, published in Edinburgh in 1819, has
sometimes been attributed to Shepherd but is now known to have
been written by a James Milne.15

10 Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections, 41–​42.

11 See Bennett, ed. The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 2:106n1.
12 Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections, 28–​29. While Shepherd’s first

book does engage with Hume, the second book has only a footnote referring to Priestley,
suggesting that there might have been a separate, earlier essay that engaged more exten-
sively with Priestley. If so, however, it is as yet unknown.
13 Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections, 29.
14 The book’s publication was announced in the March 19, 1827, edition of The

Morning Post, under the heading “This day is published.” There appear to have been two
issues of the book, as the library at the University of Cambridge has two copies that vary
in the arrangement and wording of their front matter but not in the main text: one copy
includes Shepherd’s name on the title page and one does not (Liam Sims, Rare Books
Specialist at Cambridge University Library, email message to author, January 9, 2020).
Curiously, on April 8, 1831, The Courier newspaper included Essays on the Perception
of an External Universe, with Shepherd cited as the author, in a list under the heading
“Books Published This Day.” If this was a second printing, it seems that no extant copy
survives.
15 The book sometimes attributed to Shepherd is the Enquiry Respecting the Relation of

Cause and Effect: in which the Theories of Professors Brown, and Mr. Hume, are Examined;
with a Statement of Such Observations as are Calculated to Shew the Inconsistency of
these Theories; and from which a New Theory is Deduced, More Consonant to Facts and
Experience. Also a New Theory of the Earth, Deduced from Geological Observations,
published anonymously by James Ballantyne in Edinburgh in 1819. For discussion, see
Boyle, “A Mistaken Attribution to Mary Shepherd.”
4 Mary Shepherd

Shepherd’s Two Books

In An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Shepherd argues

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that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary
truths. In particular, she argues that we can know through reason
alone both that nothing can come to exist without a cause other
than itself (which I will refer to as the Causal Principle) and that
like causes necessarily have like effects (which I will call the Causal
Likeness Principle). Her primary target in ERCE is Hume, al-
though she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown, who had
written about Hume’s causal theory in his 1805, 1806, and 1818
essays on causation, and William Lawrence, who had quoted
Brown’s Humean account of causation in his Lectures on Physiology,
Zoology, and the Natural History of Man (1819).
As is clear from the title, Essays on the Perception of an External
Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of
Causation, Shepherd considered her 1827 book to be an extension
of the earlier project on causation. Part 1 of the book is a long essay,
comprised of eight chapters, entitled “Essay On the Academical or
Skeptical Philosophy” (henceforth abbreviated as EASP). Taking
her earlier book to have established both the Causal Principle and
the Causal Likeness Principle, Shepherd appeals to those prin-
ciples in EASP to argue that we can know through reason that an
external world of continually existing objects must exist inde-
pendently of us, as the causes of our sensations. Along the way, she
raises objections to various points made by Thomas Reid, George
Berkeley, and David Hume; but her primary goal is to argue for her
own account of how we know that there is an external world. Her
footnotes in this essay draw further connections between her views
and those of Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, as well as those of Locke,
Joseph Priestley, Dugald Stewart, Kant, and James Mill; the French
philosophers Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Antoine Destutt de
Tracy, Joseph Marie de Gérando, and Pierre Jean-​Georges Cabanis;
and the Swiss physicist Pierre Prévost.
 Shepherd’s Life and Context 5

Part 2 of EPEU consists of fourteen brief essays on a variety of

topics that are, as the title of this part indicates, “Illustrative of the
Doctrines Contained in the Preceding One, and in An Essay on the

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Relation of Cause and Effect.” In other words, in part 2 Shepherd
explores how her arguments in EASP bear on other philosoph-
ical questions. These essays, though short, tend to include various
digressions and comments that are not clearly connected to the
topics indicated by the essays’ titles and in some cases repeat points
made in part 1. Shepherd apologizes for this in a footnote to essay
7, saying that the redundancies are because “these minor essays
were addressed to several friends who considered some objections
overlooked in the larger essays” (EPEU 314). Unfortunately, we
do not know which friends she means or whether their objections
were raised in conversation or some as-​yet-​undiscovered corre-
spondence with Shepherd.
Broadly speaking, the fourteen short essays in part 2 cover the
following topics: Berkeley’s idealism (essay 1); the role of the sense-​
organs in human perception and what distinguishes dreams from
reality (essay 2); the role of God (if any) in human perception (essay
3); how we perceive extension (roughly, three-​dimensionality) and
whether Reid is correct to ascribe a role to “visible figure” in so
doing (essay 4); the connections between mathematical reasoning
and inductive arguments based on experience (essay 5); the way to
understand what Berkeley had called “sensible qualities” (essay 6);
how children know the causal principles (essay 7); whether belief
in reported miracles is reasonable (essay 8); whether a final cause
(God) is needed to explain the existence of the universe (essay 9);
why it is necessary to posit a continuously existing mind as a cause
of particular sensations, and whether mind survives the death of
the body (essay 10); the immateriality of mind and the existence of
God (essay 11); why God does not require a body (essay 12); and
how mind interacts with body (essay 13). The fourteenth and final
essay briefly addresses two puzzles about vision.
6 Mary Shepherd

In this Guide, ­ chapters 1–​ 4 lead readers systematically

through Shepherd’s Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect.
Chapter 5 addresses Shepherd’s views on sensation and reasoning,

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which requires jumping ahead a bit, to EASP c­ hapter 6. Chapter 6
of this Guide proceeds step by step through the key arguments from
­chapters 1–​3, 5, and 8 of EASP.
The fourteen short essays in the rest of EPEU are much less sys-
tematic than the chapters in EASP and in some cases reprise ma-
terial covered in EASP. To avoid redundancy in this Guide, some
chapters from EASP are treated along with topics covered in the
short essays. Thus ­chapters 7–​10 of this Guide are organized as
follows: ­chapter 7 discusses Shepherd’s views on skepticism and
Berkeleyan idealism (covering EASP c­ hapter 4 and short essays 1,
2, and 6); ­chapter 8 discusses Shepherd’s accounts of mind and body
(covering EASP c­ hapter 7 and short essay 13); ­chapter 9 discusses
Shepherd’s philosophy of religion (covering short essays 8–​12); and
­chapter 10 covers Shepherd’s discussion of vision (covering short
essays 4 and 14). Readers looking for specific discussions of EPEU’s
short essays 3, 5, and 7 will find those in this Guide’s ­chapters 6, 3,
and 5, respectively.

Shepherd’s Minor Works

In 1828, Shepherd returned to the topic of vision, publishing

a longer piece, “On the Causes of Single and Erect Vision,” in
the scientific journal The Philosophical Magazine and Annals of
Philosophy; this essay was reprinted the following month in two
consecutive issues of the popular English weekly magazine The
Kaleidoscope; or, Literary and Scientific Mirror.
The year 1828 also saw the publication—​apparently not author-
ized by Shepherd—​of her critique of the writings of retired naval
officer and amateur philosopher John Fearn (1768–​1837). Fearn
published her critique in Parriana: Or Notices of the Rev. Samuel
 Shepherd’s Life and Context 7

Parr, along with his much longer and very condescending reply.
Shepherd did not let Fearn’s attack go unanswered; in 1832 she
published the essay “Lady Mary Shepherd’s Metaphysics,” in which

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she responded to Fearn.16 Noting that she had not written her orig-
inal essay on Fearn for publication, she commented that her sur-
prise at seeing the exchange with Fearn in print “was accompanied
by some little anxiety, from the recollection of the haste and incor-
rectness with which I had written a paper, really not intended for
the public eye” (LMSM 697). She undertakes in her “Metaphysics”
to show that Fearn’s remarks were “unphilosophical” and “incon-
sistent with each other” (LMSM 697) and, in doing so, provides a
clear and concise summary of her own views on extension, sensa-
tion, and causation. Although Fearn did publish a further reply,17 it
seems that Shepherd published nothing more after 1832. She died
in 1847 in London.

The Philosophical Context

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the most original work in

metaphysics and epistemology was being done in Germany. The
philosophical scene there was dominated by Immanuel Kant
(1724–​1804), who had published the Critique of Pure Reason in
1781, with the second edition appearing in 1787. The Prolegomena
was published in English translation in 1819, but little of Kant’s
work was available in English translation until the 1830s, with
the publication of John Richardson’s Metaphysical Works of the
Celebrated Immanuel Kant (1836).18 Until then, British readers
16 On the exchange between Fearn and Shepherd, see Atherton, “Reading Lady

Shepherd.”
17 The month after the appearance of “Lady Mary Shepherd’s Metaphysics” in Fraser’s

Magazine, Fearn published “A Reply to Lady Mary Shepherd on Impiety, and Professor
Stewart” in the Metropolitan Magazine.
18 This volume reprinted Richardson’s 1819 translation of the Prolegomenon, along

with his translations of Kant’s Logic (1800) and selections from various Kantian works
on the existence of God. For more details, see Naragon, “Kant in Translation.”
8 Mary Shepherd

interested in Kant’s philosophy had to rely on summaries or other

essays, such as a review article by Thomas Brown (1778–​1820),
“Viller’s Philosophy of Kant,” published in the Edinburgh Review

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(1803).19 Dugald Stewart (1753–​1828) does discuss Kant at various
points in his 1810 Essays, a book Shepherd mentions (EPEU 229n,
271n), but she does not seem to have been especially knowledge-
able about Kant; she only mentions him once, in a footnote on his
views on space and time (EPEU 59).20
Meanwhile, philosophers in England, Scotland, and France
were more focused on moral, political, and social philosophy than
on metaphysics and epistemology. Between roughly 1790 and
1830, those who did do work on metaphysics and epistemology
in these places focused on further developing views that had al-
ready been put forth earlier, rather than producing any dramati-
cally new systems. In Scotland, Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown
took up and defended the “common sense” philosophy of Thomas
Reid (1710–​96); Reid himself frequently engaged with the views
of David Hume (1711–​76), whom he saw as having followed up
on the works of Descartes, Malebranche, and Berkeley by having
“drowned all in one universal deluge” of skepticism (IHM 1.7).
English philosophers working in metaphysics and epistemology at
this time tended toward idealism; this was true of John Fearn, who
embraced a version of Berkeley’s idealism,21 as well as Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772–​1834), although his idealism was more influenced

19 Three additional summaries that might have been available to Shepherd were

Friedrich Nitsch’s A General and Introductory View of Professor Kant Concerning

Man, the World, and the Deity (1796), Anthony F. M. Willich’s The Elements of Critical
Philosophy (1798), and Thomas Wirgman’s essays on Kant published in the Encyclopedia
Londiniensis (1812).
20 As Antonia LoLordo points out, in that footnote Shepherd mischaracterizes

Kant’s views, claiming that he thought space and time are “modes” of mind (LoLordo,
“Introduction,” 9). The fact that Shepherd characterizes Kant in this way suggests that
her source was Brown’s summary in the Edinburgh Review, where he writes that Kant
thought “space and time . . . are modes of our own existence as sentient beings” (Brown,
“Viller’s Philosophy of Kant,” 259).
21 For a helpful overview of Fearn’s philosophical system, see Grandi, “Providential

Naturalism and Miracles.”

 Shepherd’s Life and Context 9

by the German philosophers Kant, Fichte, and Schelling.22 In

France, philosophers who had lived through the French Revolution
and the Reign of Terror developed themes found in the earlier work

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of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–​80).
Since Shepherd engages with Scottish common sense
philosophers, with the idealism and immaterialism of George
Berkeley (1685–​1753), and (briefly) with the French philosophers
working in Condillac’s tradition, sketches of these three philosoph-
ical systems follow, as well as a short account of the contemporary
English context of moral philosophy with which Shepherd did not
engage.

Scottish Common Sense Philosophy

In Scotland between 1790 and 1830, philosophers were grappling

with the implications of Hume’s skeptical conclusions and Reid’s
“common sense” responses to skepticism. Hume’s arguments in
the first part of the Treatise of Human Nature (1739–​40) and in the
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) had suggested
that we lack rational justification for a number of beliefs that are
central to daily life.23 According to Hume, causation should be
understood in terms of constant conjunctions of events: causes
precede effects in regular patterns, but there is no necessary con-
nection between what we take to be a cause and what we take to

22 See Cheyne, “Coleridge the Philosopher,” for a helpful introduction to Coleridge’s

philosophical thought. Coleridge and Shepherd were apparently acquaintances, for

Coleridge wrote two draft poems about her in 1833, not especially complimentary; in
one, he describes her as “a desperate Scholar,/​Like the Heavens, DEEP BLUE,” linking
her with the intellectual women of the Enlightenment who were pejoratively called
“Bluestockings” (Coburn and Harding, eds., The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Vol. 5).
23 Of course, Hume wrote on a wide range of topics other than just these two issues,

as did the other philosophers covered in this chapter. My account of the philosophical
context in which Shepherd was working considers, in broad outline, only the issues with
which Shepherd herself engaged.
10 Mary Shepherd

be an effect. Causal inferences about how objects and people will

behave turn out, on Hume’s account, to be simply the result of ha-
bitual mental associations formed through experiencing such

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constant conjunctions. Furthermore, our belief that there is an en-
during world of external objects causing our perceptions is no more
than a “fiction” that is “without any foundation in reasoning” (EHU
12.12). While twentieth-​and twenty-​first-​century scholars have
stressed the naturalistic alternative explanations that Hume gives
of the sources of these beliefs, Hume’s own contemporaries read
him as engaged in a purely destructive, entirely skeptical project.24
Reid, a minister who went on to be a professor at the University of
Aberdeen and later at the University of Glasgow, wrote that Hume’s
system would lead one to be an “absolute Sceptic.”25
In the Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common
Sense (1764), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), and
Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788), Reid sought to find a
foundation for many of our beliefs—​including those Hume had
considered to be the results of mental associations formed through
experience—​in what he called “common sense.” In his Inquiry, Reid
claimed that there are “first principles” which it is in the nature of
humans to believe and judge to be true:

If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the con-
stitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under
necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life,
without being able to give a reason for them; these are what we
call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly con-
trary to them is, what we call absurd. (IHM 2.6)

24 For some examples, see the selections in Fieser, ed., Early Responses to Hume’s

Metaphysical and Epistemological Writings.

25 Fieser, ed., Early Responses to Hume’s Metaphysical and Epistemological

Writings, 1:157.
 Shepherd’s Life and Context 11

Likewise, in the Essays, Reid writes of truths that he calls alternately

first principles, principles of common sense, common notions, self-​
evident truths, and axioms (EIP 6.4). Such principles are

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propositions which are no sooner understood than they are
believed. The judgment follows the apprehension of them nec-
essarily, and both are equally the work of nature, and the re-
sult of our original powers. There is no searching for evidence,
no weighing of arguments; the proposition is not deduced or
inferred from another; it has the light of truth in itself, and has no
occasion to borrow it from another. (EIP 6.4)

Reid argued that the principles undermined by the philosophies of

both Hume and Berkeley are in fact just of this sort: that “every change
that happens in nature must have a cause,” and that an external world
of matter exists, are beliefs that no one can doubt (EIP 6.4).
Although Reid was concerned to respond to Humean and
Berkeleyan skepticism by positing principles of common sense, his
work also had continuities with Hume’s. Hume had aimed to pro-
vide a “science of human nature” (EHU 1.1). Similarly, Reid aimed
to lay the basis for “a system of the powers and operations of the
human mind, no less certain than those of optics or astronomy”
(EIP preface). Knowledge of the human mind, Reid writes, is “a
subject highly worthy of inquiry on its own account, but still more
worthy on account of the extensive influence which the knowledge
of it hath over every other branch of science” (IHM 1.1).
Just as optics, astronomy, geology, biology, and other subdisciplines
of what was known as “natural philosophy” require careful obser-
vation and experiment, so too does progress in our understanding
of the mind. Thus, Reid writes that “all that we know of the body is
owing to anatomical dissection and observation, and it must be by
an anatomy of the mind that we can discover its powers and prin-
ciples” (IHM 1.1); but while an anatomist can study many different
bodies, the “anatomist of the mind” is confined to studying their own
12 Mary Shepherd

consciousness (IHM 1.2). Combined with the complexity of mental

processes and thoughts, this means that the analysis of the human
mind requires “great caution, and great application of mind” (IHM

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1.2). Suggesting that it is best to begin with the simplest abilities of the
mind and work up to the more complicated, Reid begins the Inquiry
with an investigation of the sense of smell (IHM 2), then turns to the
other sense modalities of taste, hearing, and touch, ending with the
“noblest” of the senses, vision (IHM 6.1). In the two later Essays, Reid
considers not just sensory perception but also memory, conception
(roughly, imagination), abstraction, judgment, and will.
Dugald Stewart, briefly a student of Reid at the University of
Glasgow, continued in the same tradition of Hume and Reid of
elucidating human nature by careful observation and analysis.
Avoiding metaphysical questions such as the nature of mind and
matter—​questions that cannot be answered and that lead to an “in-
extricable labyrinth”—​Stewart sought to identify the “faculties and
principles” that make up the “general laws of our constitution.”26
Although he thought it “unfortunate” that Reid had used the phrase
“common sense” in the title of the Inquiry,27 Stewart’s position was
similar to Reid’s; indeed, he dedicated his Elements of the Philosophy
of the Human Mind (1792) to Reid. Thus, Stewart argued that there
are “fundamental laws of human belief ” that it is equally absurd
both to doubt and to try to prove.28 These include the beliefs that
space and time exist independently of the human mind,29 that the
order of nature will continue to follow the same laws,30 and that
every change has a cause.31

26 Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. 1, introduction, part 1.

Subsequent references to Elements are to chapter and section of volume 1.

27 Stewart thinks the phrase “common sense” implies “more than due respect for

the established opinions” of some “particular sect or party” (Philosophical Essays 2.1).
References to Stewart’s Essays are to essay and chapter.
28 Stewart, Philosophical Essays 2.1.
29 Stewart, Philosophical Essays 2.1.
30 Stewart, Philosophical Essays 2.1.
31 Stewart, Elements 1.2. Although Stewart held it to be a “fundamental law of belief ”

that every change has a cause, he followed Hume’s account of causation, writing that
 Shepherd’s Life and Context 13

Another Scottish common sense philosopher who shaped

Shepherd’s thinking was Thomas Brown. After studying at the
University of Edinburgh, Brown practiced medicine from 1803

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until 1810 and then rejoined the university as chair of moral phi-
losophy. Like Stewart, Brown held that Hume was correct to ana-
lyze causation in terms of constant conjunctions of events (ONT
47, 80) but incorrect to think that our belief that causes of the same
type will always produce effects of the same type is the result of
experiencing such constant conjunctions (ONT 121–​22). Instead,
Brown argued that this belief is an “intuitive judgment, that, in cer-
tain circumstances, rises in the mind, inevitably, and with irresist-
ible conviction” (ONT 369).
While Shepherd shared with Reid, Stewart, and Brown both
a commitment to investigating and analyzing the abilities of
the human mind and the belief that Hume was wrong to explain
many of our beliefs as simply the results of mental associations and
habits,32 she did not think their explanations of those beliefs as
principles of common sense, fundamental laws of belief, or intuitive
judgments were any better. Instead, as we shall see, she emphasized
that certain key beliefs—​in the uniformity of cause and effect and
in the existence of an external world—​are the products of human
reasoning, and thus can be given rational justification.

“it seems now to be pretty generally agreed among philosophers, that there is no in-
stance in which we are able to perceive a necessary connexion between two successive
events; or to comprehend in what manner the one proceeds from the other, as its cause”
(Elements 1.2).

32 In his influential 1875 book The Scottish Philosophy, James McCosh identified three

features that he thought characterized the school of Scottish philosophy: its use of ob-
servation and “the inductive method” in “psychological investigation” (6–​8); its use of
“self-​consciousness as the instrument of observation,” using both introspection and ex-
amination of the beliefs and feelings expressed by others in speech and writing (8–​10);
and the belief that “there are laws, principles, or powers in the mind” that are “in the very
constitution of the mind” (10). For further discussion of how Shepherd’s work fits these
criteria, and thus should be considered as belonging to the school of Scottish philosophy,
see Boyle, “Expanding the Canon.”
Another random document with
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nation from the point of where 6 per
cent. bonds sold at 86, to that where 4
per cent. bonds are eagerly sought at a
premium.
[Preamble.
 Resumption.
DEMOCRATIC.
1872—A speedy return to specie
payment is demanded alike by the
highest considerations of commercial
morality and honest government.
[Plank 8.
1876—We denounce the financial
imbecility and immorality of that
party, which, during eleven years of
peace, has made no advance toward
resumption, no preparation for
resumption, but instead has
obstructed resumption, by wasting
our resources and exhausting all our
surplus income; and, while annually
professing to intend a speedy return
to specie payments, has annually
enacted fresh hindrances thereto. As
such hindrance we denounce the
resumption clause of the act of 1875,
and we here demand its repeal.
1880—* * * Honest money, * * *
consisting of gold, and silver, and
paper convertible into coin on
demand.
REPUBLICAN.
1872—* * * Our excellent national
currency will be perfected by a speedy
resumption of specie payment.
[Plank 13.
1876—In the first act of Congress
signed by President Grant, the National
Government assumed to remove any
doubts of its purpose to discharge all
just obligations to the public creditors,
and solemnly pledged its faith to make
provision at the “earliest practicable
period for the redemption of the United
States notes in coin.” Commercial
prosperity, public morals and national
credit demand that this promise be
fulfilled by a continuous and steady
progress to specie payment.
1880—* * * It [the Republican party]
has restored, upon a solid basis,
payment in coin of all National
obligations, and has given us a
currency absolutely good and equal in
every part of our extended country.
 Capital and Labor.

DEMOCRATIC. REPUBLICAN.

1868—Resolved, That this 1868—

convention sympathize cordially with
the working men of the United States
in their efforts to protect the rights
and interests of the laboring classes
of the country.
1872— 1872—Among the questions which
press for attention is that which
concerns the relations of capital and
labor, and the Republican party
recognizes the duty of so shaping
legislation as to secure full protection
and the amplest field for capital, and
for labor, the creator of capital the
largest opportunities and a just share of
the mutual profits of these two great
servants of civilization.
[Plank 11.
1880—The Democratic party is the 1880—
friend of labor and the laboring man,
and pledges itself to protect him alike
against the cormorant and the
commune.
[Plank 13.
Tariff.
 DEMOCRATIC. REPUBLICAN.

1856—The time has come for the 1856—

people of the United States to declare
themselves in favor of * * *
progressive free trade throughout the
world, by solemn manifestations, to
place their moral influence at the
side of their successful example.
[Resolve 1.

That justice and sound policy forbid

the Federal Government to foster one
branch of industry to the detriment
of any other, or to cherish the
interests of one portion to the injury
of another portion of our common
country.
[Plank 4.
1860—Reaffirmed.
1864—
1868—* * * A tariff for revenue upon
foreign imports, and such equal
taxation under the Internal Revenue
laws as will afford incidental
protection to domestic manufactures,
and as will, without impairing the
1860—That, while providing revenue
for the support of the general
Government by duties upon imports,
sound policy requires such an
adjustment of these imposts as to
encourage the development of the
industrial interests of the whole
country; and we commend that policy
of national exchanges which secures to
the workingmen liberal wages, to
agriculture remunerative prices, to
mechanics and manufacturers an
adequate reward for their skill, labor,
and enterprise, and to the nation
commercial prosperity and
independence.
[Plank 12.
1864—
1868—
revenue, impose the least burden
upon and best promote and
encourage the great industrial
interests of the country.
[Plank 6.
1872—* * * Recognizing that there
are in our midst honest but
irreconcilable differences of opinion
with regard to the respective systems
of protection and free trade, we remit
the discussion of the subject to the
people in their Congressional
districts, and to the decision of the
Congress thereon, wholly free from
executive interference or dictation.
[Plank 6.
1876—* * * We demand that all
custom-house taxation shall be only
for revenue.
[Plank 11.
1880—* * * A tariff for revenue only.
[Plank 3.
1872—* * * Revenue except so much as
may be derived from a tax upon
tobacco and liquors, should be raised
by duties upon importations, the
details of which should be so adjusted
as to aid in securing remunerative
wages to labor, and promote the
industries, prosperity, and growth of
the whole country.
[Plank 7.
1876—The revenue necessary for
current expenditures and the
obligations of the public debt must be
largely derived from duties upon
importations, which so far as possible,
should be adjusted to promote the
interests of American labor and
advance the prosperity of the whole
country.
[Plank 8.
1880—Reaffirmed.
 Education.
DEMOCRATIC.
1876—The false issue with which
they [the Republicans] would
enkindle sectarian strife in respect to
the public schools, of which the
establishment and support belong
exclusively to the several States, and
which the Democratic party has
cherished from their foundation, and
is resolved to maintain without
prejudice or preference for any class,
sect, or creed, and without largesses
from the Treasury to any.
1880—* * * Common Schools
fostered and protected.
[Plank 2.
REPUBLICAN.
1876—The public school system of the
several States is the bulwark of the
American Republic, and with a view to
its security and permanence we
recommend an Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States,
forbidding the application of any public
funds or property for the benefit of any
schools or institutions under sectarian
control.
[Plank 4.
1880—The work of popular education
is one left to the care of the several
States, but it is the duty of the National
Government to aid that work to the
extent of its constitutional ability. The
intelligence of the nation is but the
aggregate of the intelligence in the
several States, and the destiny of the
Nation must be guided, not by the
genius of any one State, but by the
average genius of all.
[Plank 3.
Duty to Union Soldiers and Sailors.
 DEMOCRATIC.
1864—That the sympathy of the
Democratic party is heartily and
earnestly extended to the soldiery of
our army and sailors of our navy,
who are and have been in the field
and on the sea under the flag of our
country, and, in the event of its
attaining power, they will receive all
the care, protection, and regard that
the brave soldiers and sailors of the
Republic so nobly earned.
[Plank 6.
1868—* * * That our soldiers and
sailors, who carried the flag of our
country to victory, against a most
gallant and determined foe, must
ever be gratefully remembered, and
all the guarantees given in their favor
must be faithfully carried into
execution.
1872—* * * We remember with
gratitude the heroism and sacrifices
of the soldiers and sailors of the
Republic, and no act of ours shall
ever detract from their justly earned
fame for the full reward of their
patriotism.
[Plank 9.
REPUBLICAN.
1864—That the thanks of the American
people are due to the soldiers and
sailors of the army and navy, who have
periled their lives in defense of the
country and in vindication of the honor
of its flag; that the nation owes to them
some permanent recognition of their
patriotism and their valor, and ample
and permanent provision for those of
their survivors who have received
disabling and honorable wounds in the
service of the country; and that the
memories of those who have fallen in
its defence shall be held in grateful and
everlasting remembrance.
[Plank 4.
1868—Of all who were faithful in the
trials of the late war, there were none
entitled to more especial honor than
the brave soldiers and seamen who
endured the hardships of campaign and
cruise and imperiled their lives in the
service of their country; the bounties
and pensions provided by the laws for
these brave defenders of the nation are
obligations never to be forgotten; the
widows and orphans of the gallant dead
are the wards of the people—a sacred
legacy bequeathed to the nation’s care.
[Plank 10.
1872—We hold in undying honor the
soldiers and sailors whose valor saved
the Union. Their pensions are a sacred
debt of the nation, and the widows and
orphans of those who died for their
country are entitled to the care of a
generous and grateful people. We favor
such additional legislation as will
extend the bounty of the Government
to all our soldiers and sailors who were
honorably discharged, and who in the

1876—* * * The soldiers and sailors
of the Republic, and the widows and
orphans of those who have fallen in
battle, have a just claim upon the
care, protection, and gratitude of
their fellow-citizens.
[Last resolution.
1880—
line of duty became disabled, without
regard to the length of service or the
cause of such discharge.
[Plank 8.
1876—The pledges which the nation
has given to her soldiers and sailors
must be fulfilled, and a grateful people
will always hold those who imperiled
their lives for the country’s
preservation, in the kindest
remembrance.
[Plank 14.
1880—That the obligations of the
Republic to the men who preserved its
integrity in the day of battle are
undiminished by the lapse of fifteen
years since their final victory. To do
them honor is and shall forever be the
grateful privilege and sacred duty of the
American people.
Naturalization and Allegiance.
 DEMOCRATIC.
1860—That the Democracy of the
United States recognize it as the
imperative of this Government to
protect the naturalized citizen in all
his rights, whether at home or in
foreign lands, to the same extent as
its native-born citizens.
[Plank 6.
1864—
1868—Equal rights and protection
for naturalized and native-born
citizens at home and abroad, the
assertion of American nationality
which shall command the respect of
foreign powers, and furnish an
example and encouragement to
people struggling for national
integrity, constitutional liberty, and
individual rights and the
maintenance of the rights of
naturalized citizens against the
absolute doctrine of immutable
allegiance, and the claims of foreign
powers to punish them for alleged
crime committed beyond their
jurisdiction.
[Plank 8.
1872—
REPUBLICAN.
1860—The Republican party is opposed
to any change in our naturalization
laws, or any State legislation by which
the rights of citizenship hitherto
accorded to immigrants from foreign
lands shall be abridged or impaired;
and in favor of giving a full and
efficient protection to the right of all
classes of citizens, whether native or
naturalized, both home and abroad.
[Plank 14.
1864—
1868—The doctrine of Great Britain
and other European Powers, that
because a man is once a subject he is
always so, must be resisted at every
hazard by the United States, as a relic
of feudal times, not authorized by the
laws of nations, and at war with our
national honor and independence.
Naturalized citizens are entitled to
protection in all their rights of
citizenship as though they were native-
born; and no citizen of the United
States, native or naturalized, must be
liable to arrest and imprisonment by
any foreign power for acts done or
words spoken in this country; and, if so
arrested and imprisoned, it is the duty
of the Government to interfere in his
behalf.
[Plank 9.
1872—The doctrine of Great Britain
and other European Powers concerning
allegiance—“once a subject always a
subject”—having at last, through the
efforts of the Republican party, been
abandoned, and the American idea of
the individual’s right to transfer
allegiance having been accepted by
European nations, it is the duty of our
 Government to guard with jealous care
the rights of adopted citizens against
the assumption of unauthorised claims
by their former Governments, and we
urge continued careful encouragement
and protection of voluntary
immigration.
[Plank 9.
1876— 1876—It is the imperative duty of the
Government so to modify existing
treaties with European governments,
that the same protection shall be
afforded to the adopted American
citizen that is given to the native-born,
and that all necessary laws should be
passed to protect emigrants in the
absence of power in the State for that
purpose.
[Plank 10.
1880— 1880—* * * Everywhere the protection
accorded to a citizen of American birth
must be secured to citizens by
American adoption.
[Plank 5.
The Chinese.
 DEMOCRATIC. REPUBLICAN.

1876—Reform is necessary to correct 1876—It is the immediate duty of

the omissions of a Republican Congress to fully investigate the effect
Congress, and the errors of our of the immigration and importation of
treaties and our diplomacy, which Mongolians upon the moral and
have stripped our fellow-citizens of material interests of the country.
foreign birth and kindred race [Plank 11.
recrossing the Atlantic, of the shield
of American citizenship, and have
exposed our brethren of the Pacific
coast to the incursions of a race not
sprung from the same great parent
stock, and in fact now by law denied
citizenship through naturalization as
being neither accustomed to the
traditions of a progressive civilization
nor exercised in liberty under equal
laws. We denounce the policy which
thus discards the liberty-loving
German and tolerates a revival of the
coolie trade in Mongolian women
imported for immoral purposes, and
Mongolian men held to perform
servile labor contracts, and demand
such modification of the treaty with
the Chinese Empire, or such
legislation within constitutional
limitations, as shall prevent further
importation or immigration of the
Mongolian race.
1880—Amendment of the 1880—Since the authority to regulate
Burlingame Treaty. No more Chinese immigration and intercourse between
immigration, except for travel, the United States and foreign nations
education, and foreign commerce, rests with the Congress of the United
and therein carefully guarded. States and the treaty-making power,
[Plank 11. the Republican party, regarding the
unrestricted immigration of Chinese as
a matter of grave concernment under
the exercise of both these powers,
would limit and restrict that
immigration by the enactment of such
just, humane, and reasonable laws and
treaties as will produce that result.
[Plank 6.
Civil Service.
 DEMOCRATIC.
1872—The civil service of the
government has become a mere
instrument of partisan tyranny and
personal ambition and an object of
selfish greed. It is a scandal and
reproach upon free institutions and
breeds a demoralization dangerous
to the perpetuity of Republican
Government. We therefore regard a
thorough reform of the civil service
as one of the most pressing
necessities of the hour; that honesty,
capacity and fidelity constitute the
only valid claim to public
employment; and the offices of the
Government cease to be a matter of
arbitrary favoritism and patronage,
and public station become again a
post of honor. To this end it is
imperatively required that no
President shall be a candidate for re-
election.
1876—Reform is necessary in the
civil service. Experience that proves
efficient, economical conduct of
Governmental business is not
possible if the civil service be subject
to change at every election, be a prize
fought for at the ballot-box, be a brief
reward of party zeal, instead of posts
of honor assigned for proved
competency, and held for fidelity in
the public employ; that the
dispensing of patronage should
neither be a tax upon the time of all
our public men, nor the instrument
of their ambition.
REPUBLICAN.
1872—Any system of the civil service,
under which the subordinate positions
of the Government are considered
rewards for mere party zeal is fatally
demoralizing, and we therefore favor a
reform of the system by laws which
shall abolish the evils of patronage and
make honesty, efficiency and fidelity
the essential qualifications for public
positions, without practically creating a
life tenure of office.
[Plank 5.
1876—Under the Constitution the
President and heads of Departments
are to make nominations for office; the
Senate is to advise and consent to
appointments, and the House of
Representatives to accuse and
prosecute faithless officers. The best
interest of the public service demands
that these distinctions be respected;
that Senators and Representatives who
may be judges and accusers should not
dictate appointments to office. The
invariable rule in appointments should
have reference to the honesty, fidelity
and capacity of the appointees, giving
to the party in power those places
where harmony and vigor of
administration require its policy to be
represented, but permitting all others

1880—* * * Thorough reform in the
civil service.
to be filled by persons selected with
sole reference to the efficiency of the
public service, and the right of all
citizens to share in the honor of
rendering faithful service to the
country.
[Plank 5.
1880—The Republican party, adhering
to the principles affirmed by its last
National Convention of respect for the
Constitutional rules governing
appointments to office, adopts the
declaration of President Hayes, that the
reform of the civil service should be
thorough, radical and complete. To this
end it demands the co-operation of the
legislative with the executive
departments of the Government, and
that Congress shall so legislate that
fitness, ascertained by proper practical
tests, shall admit to the public service.