Thomas Reid, the philosopher of the Scottish School of Common Sense, was renowned for the clarity and illustrativeness of his writing. In his time, his work was better-regarded than Hume's. But as well as holding academic positions, including being Adam Smith's successor as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, he was a Church of Scotland minister. That allowed his talent at philosophy to collide with his greatest ineptitude. Apparently, he could not give an appealing public speech. As a lecturer away from the pulpit, he was similarly bad.
It is odd that seemingly similar types of work - writing a treatise and writing a speech - were not the same to Reid. Perhaps it was stage fright and perhaps it was something else. We all seem to have small niggles that arrest our development in some area, while leaving the other untouched.
When I was nine, I was in the school choir and we were rehearsing a song for our first performance since I had joined. I enjoyed the two or three weeks I had been going to the lessons, but we sang a song with a line about a grandmother. I knew that mine would be in the audience when we sang it, and I was seized by a preposterous embarassment at the thought of singing any line referring to a grandmother. A strange little boy, I left the choir. I really cannot sing at all, and I wonder if I would now be able to sing had I not left the class for a nonsense embarassment.
In the painting here, I tried to make Reid a gormless incapable, but with wisdom behind his eyes. That he was bad in public but good inside his own head seems slightly incongrous with his philosophical position. The painting is not very faithful to his actual appearance, which may be due to lack of skill. I think that the headgear he is wearing is a chaperon.
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