 In the first place, Reid believes that the fundamental moral principles cannot be the product of convention. His argument in this case is directed against Hume. In Reid’s view, Hume defends a conventionalist account of justice, which rides on a quasi-genetic account of the emergence of the norms of justice. According to Hume’s story, we begin with a notion of our good on the whole. Out of a concern to secure our good on the whole, we create the rules of justice by convention. In response, Reid notes that to have the concept of one’s good on the whole, one must also have the concepts of ‘being a favor’ and ‘being an injury.’ These concepts, however, are “early in the mind of man as any rational notion whatever” (EAP V.v: 309). Reid contends that Hume would seem also to be committed to as much. Hume, after all, believes gratitude and resentment to be “natural” sentiments that are concerned with favors and injuries. Call those concepts that cluster around the notion of justice, such as ‘being wronged,’ ‘being what is deserved,’ and ‘being that to which one is entitled,’ our concepts of primary justice. Reid argues that Hume’s quasi-genetic story faces a problem, for a person cannot have the concepts ‘being a favor’ and ‘being an injury’ without first having the concepts of primary justice.