It may be objected that such a reduction of material to mental beauty cannot serve Reid’s case for realism, at least as it applies to material objects. For it may seem that the beauty we attribute to material objects can never be real, by Reid’s lights, given that no material object ever can have any of the mental perfections capable of grounding beauty. But such an objection misses a subtlety of Reid’s position. Strictly speaking, material objects never are beautiful. But this does not imply th