Not surprisingly, given Jefferson’s years of being taught by Douglas and Small, two Scots, his views would come to reflect Scottish thinkers of the time. The historian Ralph Ketcham detects in Jefferson’s thinking “the basic influence . . . of Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and other Scottish Enlightenment philosophers.”17 This Scottish influence would remain with him throughout his life, most notably in its emphasis on testing ideas against observation through one’s own senses.
