 When Reid enquires next after the perfections in virtue of which we ascribe beauty to material objects, his account takes a Shaftesburian turn. Reid revives Shaftesbury’s distinction between original and representative beauty (though he prefers the term “derived” to “representative”) and also Shaftesbury’s claim that the beauty of material objects derives from the original beauty of minds. This allows him to maintain that the perfections in virtue of which we attribute beauty to material objects just are the perfections in virtue of which we attribute beauty to minds. But whereas Shaftesbury simply infers without further argument the reduction of material to mental beauty from the premise that material beauty is the effect of mind, Reid takes up instance after instance of material beauty, arguing with respect to each that it is best understood as a “sign” of some instance of mental beauty. The beauty we attribute to inanimate nature signifies the wisdom and goodness of the mind that fashioned it for our use (Reid 1785 [1969, 799–800]); the beauty we attribute to animals, insofar as we regard them as minded, signifies “their instincts, their appetites, their affections, their sagacity” (Reid 1785 [1969, 794]); the beauty we attribute to the human form signifies either “some perfection of the body, as a part of the man, and an instrument of the mind” or “some amiable quality or attribute of the mind itself” (Reid 1785 [1969, 806]).