 According to the picture sketched thus far, Reid’s account of autonomous action is as follows: We human beings can act from a great variety of principles, including the so-called mechanical and animal principles. What renders us rational agents distinct from the rest of the animals is our ability to gain critical distance from these incentives and regulate our conduct by appeal to the two rational principles of action, asking whether a given course of action truly contributes to our good on the whole and is consonant with moral duty. Finally, the principle of duty enjoys motivational primacy. Although I have not yet emphasized the point, the similarities between Reid’s and Kant’s thought in these respects are unmistakable. (We have, however, no evidence that Reid was aware of Kant’s work.) According to both Reid and Kant, we are rational beings not primarily because we can engage in means-end practical reasoning. Rather, we are practically rational agents primarily because we can assess the various impulses to act by appeal to a “certain general principle” or law – this law consisting, in Reid’s view, in the rational principles of action. Indeed, if J. B. Schneewind is correct, Reid and Kant were unique among the moderns inasmuch as that they conceived of morality primarily in terms of rational self-governance (see Schneewind 1998).