STUDENT AT GLASGOW COLLEGE
A.D. 1737-1740. _Aet._ 14-17
Smith entered Glasgow College in 1737, no doubt in October, when the
session began, and he remained there till the spring of 1740. The arts
curriculum at that time extended over five sessions, so that Smith did
not complete the course required for a degree. In the three sessions
he attended he would go through the classes of Latin, Greek,
Mathematics, and Moral Philosophy, and have thus listened to the
lectures of the three eminent teachers who were then drawing students
to this little western College from the most distant quarters, and
keeping its courts alive with a remarkable intellectual activity. Dr.
A. Carlyle, who came to Glasgow College for his divinity classes after
he had finished his arts course at Edinburgh, says he found a spirit
of inquiry and a zeal for learning abroad among the students of
Glasgow which he remembered nothing like among the students of
Edinburgh. This intellectual awakening was the result mainly of the
teaching of three professors--Alexander Dunlop, Professor of Greek, a
man of fine scholarship and taste, and an unusually engaging method of
instruction; Robert Simson, the professor of Mathematics, an original
if eccentric genius, who enjoyed a European reputation as the restorer
of the geometry of the ancients; and above all, Francis Hutcheson, a
thinker of great original power, and an unrivalled academic lecturer.
Smith would doubtless improve his Greek to some extent under Dunlop,
though from all we know of the work of that class, he could not be
carried very far there. Dunlop spent most of his first year teaching
the elements of Greek grammar with Verney's Grammar as his textbook,
and reading a little of one or two easy authors as the session
advanced. Most of the students entered his class so absolutely
ignorant of Greek that he was obliged to read a Latin classic with
them for the first three months till they learnt enough of the Greek
grammar to read a Greek one. In the second session they were able to
accompany him through some of the principal Greek classics, but the
time was obviously too short for great things. Smith, however, appears
at this time to have shown a marked predilection for mathematics.
Dugald Stewart's father, Professor Matthew Stewart of Edinburgh, was a
class-fellow of Smith's at Glasgow; and Dugald Stewart has heard his
father reminding Smith of a "geometrical problem of considerable
difficulty by which he was occupied at the time when their
acquaintance commenced, and which had been proposed to him as an
exercise by the celebrated Dr. Simson." The only other fellow-student
of his at Glasgow of whom we have any knowledge is Dr. Maclaine, the
translator of Mosheim, and author of several theological works; and
Dr. Maclaine informed Dugald Stewart, in private conversation, of
Smith's fondness for mathematics in those early days. For his
mathematical professor, Robert Simson himself, Smith always retained
the profoundest veneration, and one of the last things he ever
wrote--a passage he inserted in the new edition of his _Theory of
Moral Sentiments_, published immediately before his death in
1790--contains a high tribute to the gifts and character of that
famous man. In this passage Smith seeks to illustrate a favourite
proposition of his, that men of science are much less sensitive to
public criticism and much more indifferent to unpopularity or neglect
than either poets or painters, because the excellence of their work
admits of easy and satisfactory demonstration, whereas the excellence
of the poet's work or the painter's depends on a judgment of taste
which is more uncertain; and he points to Robert Simson as a signal
example of the truth of that proposition. "Mathematicians," he says,
"who may have the most perfect assurance of the truth and of the
importance of their discoveries, are frequently very indifferent about
the reception which they may meet with from the public. The two
greatest mathematicians that I ever have had the honour to be known
to, and I believe the two greatest that have lived in my time, Dr.
Robert Simson of Glasgow and Dr. Matthew Stewart of Edinburgh, never
seemed to feel even the slightest uneasiness from the neglect with
which the ignorance of the public received some of their most valuable
works."[8] And it ought to be remembered that when Smith wrote thus of
Simson he had been long intimate with D'Alembert.
But while Smith improved his Greek under Dunlop, and acquired a
distinct ardour for mathematics under the inspiring instructions of
Simson, the most powerful and enduring influence he came under at
Glasgow was undoubtedly that of Hutcheson--"the never-to-be-forgotten
Hutcheson," as he styled him half a century later in recalling his
obligations to his old College on the occasion of his election to the
Rectorship. No other man, indeed, whether teacher or writer, did so
much to awaken Smith's mind or give a bent to his ideas. He is
sometimes considered a disciple of Hume and sometimes considered a
disciple of Quesnay; if he was any man's disciple, he was Hutcheson's.
Hutcheson was exactly the stamp of man fitted to stir and mould the
thought of the young. He was, in the first place, one of the most
impressive lecturers that ever spoke from an academic chair. Dugald
Stewart, who knew many of his pupils, states that every one of them
told of the extraordinary impression his lectures used to make on
their hearers. He was the first professor in Glasgow to give up
lecturing in Latin and speak to his audience in their own tongue, and
he spoke without notes and with the greatest freedom and animation.
Nor was it only his eloquence, but his ideas themselves were rousing.
Whatever he touched upon, he treated, as we may still perceive from
his writings, with a certain freshness and decided originality which
must have provoked the dullest to some reflection, and in a bracing
spirit of intellectual liberty which it was strength and life for the
young mind to breathe. He was not long in Glasgow, accordingly, till
he was bitterly attacked by the older generation outside the walls of
the College as a "new light" fraught with dangers to all accepted
beliefs, and at the same time worshipped like an idol by the younger
generation inside the walls, who were thankful for the light he
brought them, and had no quarrel with it for being new. His immediate
predecessor in that chair, Professor Gershom Carmichael, the reputed
father of the Scottish Philosophy, was still a Puritan of the
Puritans, wrapt in a gloomy Calvinism, and desponding after signs that
would never come. But Hutcheson belonged to a new era, which had
turned to the light of nature for guidance, and had discovered by it
the good and benevolent Deity of the eighteenth century, who lived
only for human welfare, and whose will was not to be known from
mysterious signs and providences, but from a broad consideration of
the greater good of mankind--"the greatest happiness of the greatest
number." Hutcheson was the original author of that famous phrase.
All this was anathema to the exponents of the prevailing theology with
which, indeed, it seemed only too surely to dispense; and in Smith's
first year at Glasgow the local Presbytery set the whole University in
a ferment by prosecuting Hutcheson for teaching to his students, in
contravention of his subscription to the Westminster Confession, the
following two false and dangerous doctrines: 1st, that the standard
of moral goodness was the promotion of the happiness of others; and
2nd, that we could have a knowledge of good and evil without and prior
to a knowledge of God. This trial of course excited the profoundest
feeling among the students, and they actually made a formal appearance
before the Presbytery, and defended their hero zealously both by word
and writing. Smith, being only a bajan--a first year's student--would
play no leading part in these proceedings, but he could not have lived
in the thick of them unmoved, and he certainly--either then or
afterwards, when he entered Hutcheson's class and listened to his
lectures on natural theology, or perhaps attended his private class on
the Sundays for special theological study--adopted the religious
optimism of Hutcheson for his own creed, and continued under its
influence to the last of his days.
In politics also Hutcheson's lectures exercised important practical
influence on the general opinion of his students. The principles of
religious and political liberty were then so imperfectly comprehended
and so little accepted that their advocacy was still something of a
new light, and we are informed by one of Hutcheson's leading
colleagues, Principal Leechman, that none of his lectures made a
deeper or wider impression than his exposition of those principles,
and that very few of his pupils left his hands without being imbued
with some of the same love of liberty which animated their master.
Smith was no exception, and that deep strong love of all reasonable
liberty which characterised him must have been, if not first kindled,
at any rate quickened by his contact with Hutcheson.
Interesting traces of more specific influence remain. Dugald Stewart
seems to have heard Smith himself admit that it was Hutcheson in his
lectures that suggested to him the particular theory of the right of
property which he used to teach in his own unpublished lectures on
jurisprudence, and which founded the right of property on the general
sympathy of mankind with the reasonable expectation of the occupant
to enjoy unmolested the object which he had acquired or discovered.[9]
But it is most probable that his whole theory of moral sentiments was
suggested by the lectures of Hutcheson, perhaps the germs of it even
when he was passing through the class. For Hutcheson in the course of
his lectures expressly raises and discusses the question, Can we
reduce our moral sentiments to sympathy? He answered the question
himself in the negative, on the ground that we often approve of the
actions of people with whom we have no sympathy, our enemies for
example, and his pupil's contribution to the discussion was an
ingenious attempt to surmount that objection by the theory of sympathy
with an impartial spectator.
Hutcheson's name occurs in no history of political economy, but he
lectured systematically on that subject--as Smith himself subsequently
did--as a branch of his course on natural jurisprudence, a discussion
of contracts requiring him to examine the principles of value,
interest, currency, etc., and these lectures, though fragmentary, are
remarkable for showing a grasp of economic questions before his time,
and presenting, with a clear view of their importance, some of Smith's
most characteristic positions. He is free from the then prevailing
mercantilist fallacies about money. His remarks on value contain what
reads like a first draft of Smith's famous passage on value in use and
value in exchange. Like Smith, he holds labour to be the great source
of wealth and the true measure of value, and declares every man to
have the natural right to use his faculties according to his own
pleasure for his own ends in any work or recreation that inflicts no
injury on the persons or property of others, except when the public
interests may otherwise require. This is just Smith's system of
natural liberty in matters industrial, with a general limitation in
the public interest such as Smith also approves. In the practical
enforcement of this limitation he would impose some particular
restraints which Smith might not, but, on the other hand, he would
abolish other particular restraints which Smith, and even Quesnay,
would still retain, _e.g._ the fixing of interest by law. His doctrine
was essentially the doctrine of industrial liberty with which Smith's
name is identified, and in view of the claims set up on behalf of the
French Physiocrats that Smith learnt that doctrine in their school, it
is right to remember that he was brought into contact with it in
Hutcheson's class-room at Glasgow some twenty years before any of the
Physiocrats had written a line on the subject, and that the very first
ideas on economic subjects which were presented to his mind contained
in germ--and in very active and sufficient germ--the very doctrines
about liberty, labour, and value on which his whole system was
afterwards built.
Though Smith was a mere lad of sixteen at that time, his mind had
already, under Hutcheson's stimulating instructions, begun to work
effectively on the ideas lodged in it and to follow out their
suggestions in his own thought. Hutcheson seems to have recognised his
quality, and brought him, young though he was, under the personal
notice of David Hume. There is a letter written by Hume to Hutcheson
on the 4th of March 1740 which is not indeed without its difficulties,
but if, as Mr. Burton thinks, the Mr. Smith mentioned in it be the
economist, it would appear as if Smith had, while attending
Hutcheson's class,--whether as a class exercise or otherwise,--written
an abstract of Hume's _Treatise of Human Nature_, then recently
published, that Smith's abstract was to be sent to some periodical for
publication, and that Hume was so pleased with it that he presented
its young author with a copy of his own work. "My bookseller," Hume
writes, "has sent to Mr. Smith a copy of my book, which I hope he has
received as well as your letter. I have not yet heard what he has done
with the abstract. Perhaps you have. I have got it printed in London,
but not in the _Works of the Learned_, there having been an article
with regard to my book somewhat abusive before I sent up the
abstract." If the Mr. Smith of this letter is Adam Smith, then he must
have been away from Glasgow at that time, for Hutcheson was
communicating with him by letter, but that may possibly be explained
by the circumstance that he had been appointed to one of the Snell
exhibitions at Balliol College, Oxford, and might have gone home to
Kirkcaldy to make preparations for residence at the English
University, though he did not actually set out for it till June.
These Snell exhibitions, which were practically in the gift of the
Glasgow professors, were naturally the prize of the best student of
Glasgow College at the time they fell vacant, and they have been held
in the course of the two centuries of their existence by many
distinguished men, including Sir William Hamilton and Lockhart,
Archbishop Tait and Lord President Inglis. They were originally
founded by an old Glasgow student, a strong Episcopalian, for the
purpose of educating Scotchmen for the service of the Episcopal Church
in Scotland. By the terms of his will the holders were even to be
bound under penalty of £500 "to enter holy orders and return to serve
the Church in Scotland," and it has sometimes been concluded from that
circumstance that Smith must have accepted the Snell exhibition with a
view to the Episcopal ministry. But the original purpose of the
founder was frustrated by the Revolution settlement, which made "the
Church in Scotland" Presbyterian, and left scarce any Episcopal
remnant to serve, and the original condition has never been
practically enforced. The last attempt to impose it was made during
Smith's own tenure of the exhibition, and failed. In the year 1744 the
Vice-Chancellor and the heads of Colleges at Oxford raised a process
in the Court of Chancery for compelling the Snell exhibitioners "to
submit and conform to the doctrines and discipline of the Church of
England, and to enter into holy orders when capable thereof by the
canons of the Church of England"; but the Court of Chancery refused to
interfere, and the exhibitioners were left entirely free to choose
their sect, their profession, and their country, as seemed best to
themselves. It may be added that in Smith's time the Snell foundation
yielded five exhibitions of £40 a year each, tenable for eleven years.
Of Smith's friends among his fellow-students at Glasgow, no names have
been preserved for us except those already mentioned, Professor
Matthew Stewart, and Dr. Maclaine, the embassy chaplain at the Hague.
He continued on a footing of great intimacy with Stewart, whom, as we
have seen, he considered to be, after Robert Simson, the greatest
mathematician of his time, and he seems to have enjoyed occasional
opportunities of renewing his acquaintance with Dr. Maclaine, though
the opportunities could not have been frequent, as Maclaine spent his
whole active life abroad as English chaplain at the Hague. But the
remark made by Smith to Dr. William Thompson, a historical writer of
the last century, seems to imply his having had some intercourse with
his early friend. Thompson, Dr. Watson the historian of Philip II.,
and Dr. Maclaine, seem all to have been writing the history of the
Peace of Utrecht, and Smith, who knew all three, said Watson was much
afraid of Maclaine, and Maclaine was just as much afraid of Watson,
but he could have told them of one they had much more cause to fear,
and that was Thompson himself.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, i. 313.
[9] Stewart's _Works,_ vii. 263.