There are two historic personalities, both in England, who witness to the fact that the emergence of Reid’s philosophy on the stage of history was by no means an accidental event but that it represents a symptom of a general reappearance of the long-forgotten picture of man, in which birth no more than death sets up an absolute limit to human existence. They are Thomas Traherne (1638-74) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850).