 Suppose, then, that in Reid’s view appeal to moral first principles rarely plays a role in the formation of particular moral judgments. It is natural to wonder about the role Reid envisions moral first principles to play in ordinary moral thought. On this matter, Reid says less than one might like. A promising strategy of interpretation, however, is to draw a parallel between the first principles of morality, on the one hand, and what Reid says about the first principles of common sense in the Inquiry and Essays on the Intellectual Powers, on the other.