The following passage in Reid’s Inquiry provides a key for the understanding of his difficulty in conceiving an adequate picture of man’s being. In this passage Reid maintains that all art is based on man’s experience of the natural language of things, and that in every human being there lives an inborn artist who is more or less crippled by man’s growing accustomed to the state of artificial language in his intercourse with the world. In continuation of the passage quoted on page 99 Reid says: