THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER
By his Edinburgh lectures Smith had proved that he could be at once
learned and popular, and the fact that he was probably the only Scottish
savant who had thoroughly acquired the English accent at a time when
English had suddenly become highly fashionable north of the Tweed, would
do him no harm in loyal Glasgow, where the English connection, with all
its solid advantages, was well esteemed. Accordingly in 1750, when a
vacancy occurred in the chair of Logic at Glasgow, Adam Smith’s
candidature proved very acceptable, and he was unanimously appointed by
the Senate. A week later he read a Latin dissertation on the Origin of
Ideas, signed the Westminster Confession of Faith before the Presbytery
of Glasgow, and took the usual oath of fidelity to the authorities. So
far as I am aware, it has not been noticed hitherto that the substance
of Smith’s inaugural dissertation, _De Origine Idearum_, has been
preserved in a fragment published by his literary executors after his
death. _The History of the Ancient Logics and Metaphysics_, as the piece
is called, deserves notice not only as one of the earliest specimens of
Smith’s extraordinary power of reasoning, but because it proves his
interest in some metaphysical questions which are suppressed or ignored
in his larger treatises, and at the same time exhibits the range and
accuracy of his classical scholarship.
In describing the ancient dialectic Smith had to give an explanation of
what Plato meant by “ideas.” The later Platonists imagined their master
to mean no more than that “the Deity formed the world after what we
would now call an idea or plan conceived in his own mind, in the same
manner as any other artist.” Against them the young philosopher
proceeded to turn the formidable battery of ratiocination that was one
day to demolish a living and formidable foe. It is characteristic of
Adam Smith that whether he is attacking the harmless errors of an
extinct school of thought, or the noxious fallacies of an established
policy, he tries every mode of assault. He “swims, or sinks, or wades,
or creeps, or flies”:—
“If Plato had meant to express no more than this most natural and
simple of all notions, he might surely have expressed it more plainly,
and would hardly, one would think, have talked of it with so much
emphasis, as of something which it required the utmost reach of
thought to comprehend. According to this representation, Plato’s
notion of species, or Universals, was the same with that of Aristotle.
Aristotle, however, does not seem to understand it as such; he bestows
a great part of his Metaphysics upon confuting it, and opposes it in
all his other works.”
Again, this notion of the separate existence of Species is the very
basis of Plato’s philosophy; and there is not a single dialogue in all
his works which does not refer to it. Can Aristotle, “who appears to
have been so much superior to his master in everything but eloquence,”
wilfully have misinterpreted Plato’s fundamental principle when Plato’s
writings were in everybody’s hands and his disciples were spread all
over Greece; when Speusippus, the nephew and successor of Plato, as well
as Xenocrates, who continued the school in the Academy, at the same time
as Aristotle held his in the Lyceum, must have been ready at all times
to expose and affront him for such gross disingenuity? Aristotle’s
interpretation had been followed by Cicero, Seneca, and every classical
authority down to Plutarch, “an author who seems to have been as bad a
critic in philosophy as in history, and to have taken everything at
second-hand in both.”
Whether Smith either then or at any time arrived at metaphysical
certainty is very doubtful. “To explain the nature, and to account for
the origin of general Ideas is,” he says, “even at this day, the
greatest difficulty in abstract philosophy.”
“How the human mind when it reasons concerning the general nature of
triangles, should either conceive, as Mr. Locke imagines it does, the
idea of a triangle, which is neither obtusangular, nor rectangular,
nor acutangular; but which was at once both none and of all those
together; or should, as Malbranche thinks necessary for this purpose,
comprehend at once, within its finite capacity, all possible triangles
of all possible forms and dimensions, which are infinite in number, is
a question to which it is not easy to give a satisfactory answer.”
He suggests that notions like those of Plato, or Cudworth, or
Malebranche, depend a good deal upon the vague and general language in
which they are expressed. So long as a philosophy is not very distinctly
explained, it “passes easily enough through the indolent imagination
accustomed to substitute words in the room of ideas.” Platonism vanishes
indeed, and is discovered to be altogether incomprehensible upon an
attentive consideration. It did, however, require attentive
consideration, and but for Aristotle “might without examination have
continued to be the current philosophy for a century or two.” This early
and unnoticed composition proves that Smith had thought deeply on
metaphysics though he deliberately avoided them in his masterpieces.
He found time to translate and read part of the essay as a Latin
dissertation; but his engagements in Edinburgh prevented him from taking
up his new work before the autumn. When October came he found his task
doubled. Craigie, the Professor of Ethics, had fallen ill, and had been
ordered to Lisbon for his health. Smith was informed of this by Dr.
Cullen, one of his new colleagues, and was requested to undertake
Craigie’s duties. It was further suggested that he should pay particular
attention to jurisprudence and politics, which were held to fall within
the province of moral philosophy. Smith replies (3rd September 1751)
that he will gladly relieve Craigie of his class, and will willingly
undertake to lecture on natural jurisprudence and politics.
The session began on the 10th of October, and soon afterwards came the
news of Craigie’s death. Smith detested the sophisms of what he called
“the cobweb science” of Ontology, and cared little for the Logic of the
schools. He was anxious, therefore, to be transferred to the chair of
Ethics, and at the same time formed a design with other friends to
procure the appointment of his friend David Hume to the chair of Logic.
But the prejudice against Hume proved too strong. “I should prefer David
Hume to any man for the college,” Smith wrote privately to Cullen, “but
I am afraid the public would not be of my opinion, and the interest of
the society will oblige us to have regard to the opinion of the public.”
This was from Edinburgh, whither Smith had made what was then
(incredible as it may seem) a two-days’ journey from Glasgow, in order
to wait upon Archibald, Duke of Argyll, nicknamed King of Scotland,
because he exercised a sort of royal influence over all Scottish
appointments. At the duke’s levee Smith was duly introduced, and his
application was successful. The transfer was effected, and in April
Smith was appointed to the chair which he was to adorn for twelve years.
It was perhaps the most important event of his life. For a temperament
like his, so prone to study and reflection, so averse to the toil of the
pen, required some constant external stimulus, some congenial inducement
to undertake the task of exposition. His gifts might have remained idle,
his talents buried, had not the warm and sympathetic atmosphere of a
full, eager, and admiring class-room set his tongue and his more
reluctant pen in motion. We need not brood over the
might-not-have-beens; but when we think of the power that fortune
exercises over men’s lives, we may thank her for assigning Adam Smith at
this critical moment to the town and University of Glasgow. By that
propitious act she lent powerful aid to the construction of a science
that must ever be associated with the prosperity and peaceful progress
of mankind.
Smith himself has indicated in a general statement the advantages he
derived from this professorship:—
“To impose upon any man the necessity of teaching, year after year,
any particular branch of science, seems, in reality, to be the most
effectual method for rendering him completely master of it himself. By
being obliged to go every year over the same ground, if he is good for
anything he necessarily becomes, in a few years, well acquainted with
every part of it: and if upon any particular point he should form too
hasty an opinion one year, when he comes in the course of his lectures
to reconsider the same subject the year thereafter, he is very likely
to correct it. As to be a teacher of science is certainly the natural
employment of a mere man of letters, so is it likewise perhaps the
education which is most likely to render him a man of solid learning
and knowledge.”
He regarded the profession of teacher as an education, and for that very
reason he never ceased to be a learner and a discoverer. Instead of
sticking in the muddy ruts of dogma, he drove on gathering facts and
opinions till he reached the goal. To vary a well-known inscription, he
might have written over the door of his class-room, “Deverticulum
philosophi ad veritatem proficiscentis,”—the resting-place of a
philosopher on march to truth. Assuredly a happier appointment was never
made, whether we look at the true interests of the Professor himself or
at those of the University. Smith always thought the years at Glasgow
the happiest and most useful of his life. Besides his strong preference
for Morals over Logic, he had carnal reasons to rejoice in the
transference, for it gave a rather better income. Altogether the chair
of Morals at Glasgow seems to have yielded about £170 a year—a fine
income in Scotland at a time when, as Mr. Rae observes, the largest
stipend in the Presbyterian Church was £138.
In addition to salary and fees, Smith was allotted a good house in the
Professors’ Court, which he shared with his mother and cousin (Miss Jane
Douglas), who came from Kirkcaldy to live with him. The manses in the
old Professors’ Court were held by the professors in order of seniority,
and Smith removed three times in order to take full advantage of his
privileges, obtaining the best in 1762, when Leechman, Hutcheson’s
biographer, was appointed Principal. In 1761, when a second edition of
the _Moral Sentiments_ appeared, with a newly inserted passage
describing the view from his study window, he was in the house
previously occupied by Dr. Dick, Professor of Natural Philosophy. To
this house nature seems to have been especially kind,—though in reading
Smith’s description of his view we must recollect that Glasgow, the
garden city, was then famous for the clearness of its atmosphere and the
beauty of its surroundings. “In my present situation,” that is to say,
looking from the window of his study, he sees “an immense landscape of
lawns and woods and distant mountains.” The landscape illustrates the
philosophy of the mind: it “seems to do no more than cover the little
window which I write by and to be out of all proportion less than the
chamber in which I am sitting.” He can form a just comparison between
the great objects of the remote scene and the little objects in the room
only by transporting himself to a different station from whence both
could be surveyed at nearly equal distances. The image, it will be seen,
is introduced by Adam Smith to illustrate his theory of “the impartial
spectator,” the judge within the breast, whom we must consult if we are
to see the things that concern ourselves and others in their true shape
and proportions. Just as a man must in some measure be acquainted with
the philosophy of vision before he can be thoroughly convinced how small
is his own room compared with the mountains he sees from his window, so
to the selfish and original passions of human nature, unschooled by
experience, unassisted by scale or measure, “the loss or gain of a very
small interest of our own appears to be of vastly more importance,
excites a much more passionate joy or sorrow than the greatest concern
of another with whom we have no particular connection.”[9]
With the failure of Hume’s candidature for the Logic chair was lost a
golden opportunity of associating two of the first philosophers of that
age on the staff of a small provincial college in one of the poorest,
rudest, and least frequented kingdoms of Western Europe. The legend that
Burke (four years before he published his _Treatise on the Sublime and
Beautiful_) was another candidate has been adjudged apocryphal, though
it was formerly accepted by good authorities. Many of the Glasgow
students were Irish Presbyterians, and an Irishman might well have been
encouraged to seek a chair in the University of Hutcheson.
George Jardine, a student in 1760 and Professor of Logic from 1774,
dated the first radical reform in the teaching of philosophy at Glasgow,
from a royal visitation of 1727, after which each professor was
restricted to a particular department instead of being required to
lecture for three successive years in logic, ethics, and physics. He
adds that the improvements thus introduced were greatly promoted by
fortunate appointments. First came Dr. Francis Hutcheson, whose “copious
and splendid eloquence” illustrated an amiable system of morality, and
at the same time popularised the use of English as the medium of
instruction. Hutcheson’s reforms were not suspended by his death. But
the Logic class continued to be conducted in Latin until Adam Smith,
being rather unexpectedly called to the office in 1750, “found it
necessary to read in the English language a course of lectures in
Rhetoric and Belles Lettres which he had formerly delivered in
Edinburgh.” The last department in the University to abandon Latin was
Law, and the innovator was Smith’s pupil and friend, John Millar.
After Smith’s brief tenure of the chair, Logic fell back for a time to
its old subject-matter, but the Latin medium could not be revived. “From
the time that the lectures began to be delivered in English the eyes of
men were opened,” writes Jardine. It was felt that the old logic of the
schools, even when perfectly understood, had little or no connection
with modern thought, and none with the active business of life. The
local situation, too, of the University in a great commercial city,
where men had a quick perception of utility, and looked for a clear
adaptation of means to ends, helped to promote reform. But dislike of
Logic and Ontology was not peculiar to Smith or to Glasgow. They were
discountenanced by the most popular philosopher of that age. “Had the
craftiest men,” wrote Shaftesbury in his _Characteristics_, “for many
ages together been employed in finding out a method to confound reason
and to degrade the understandings of men, they could not perhaps have
succeeded better than by the establishing of this mock science.”
Hutcheson had ignored logic and avoided metaphysical problems. In his
_Theory of Moral Sentiments_, Smith renounced “the abstruse syllogisms
of a quibbling dialectic”; but he never made the mistake of confounding
Aristotle with the Aristotelians.
There is in the _Wealth of Nations_ a highly interesting digression upon
the Universities, to explain how Greek conceptions of philosophy were
debased in the Middle Ages, and how its ancient division into three
parts was altered for another into five in most of the academies of
Europe. In the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the
nature either of the human mind or the deity made a part of the system
of physics. Whatever reason could conclude or conjecture upon the human
and the divine mind, made two chapters of “the science which pretended
to give an account of the origin and revolutions of the great system of
the universe.” But in the universities of Europe, “where philosophy was
taught only as subservient to theology,” it was natural to dwell upon
these two chapters and to make them distinct sciences. And so
Metaphysics or Pneumatics were set up in opposition to Physics.
The result was, in Adam Smith’s view, disastrous. While on the one hand,
subjects requiring experiment and observation, and capable of yielding
many useful discoveries, were almost entirely neglected; on the other a
subject, in which “after a few very simple and obvious truths the most
careful attention can discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty,
and can consequently produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was
greatly cultivated.” Metaphysics having thus been set up in opposition
to physics, the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third,
called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and
attributes common to both. “But if subtleties and sophisms composed the
greater part of the Metaphysics or Pneumatics of the schools, they
composed the whole of this cobweb science of Ontology.” Holding these
views, it is not surprising that Smith welcomed an escape from this
chair to one which proposed as its object an inquiry of a very different
nature: wherein consists the happiness and perfection of a man,
considered not only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of
a state, and of the great society of mankind. Here was a stepping-stone
to the _Wealth of Nations_. Meanwhile he did what he could to unsettle
the cobweb sciences.
Of Smith as a logician, John Millar, a member of his class in 1751-2,
wrote that he “saw the necessity of departing widely from the plan that
had been followed by his predecessors, and of directing the attention of
his pupils to studies of a more interesting and useful nature than the
logic and the metaphysics of the schools.” Accordingly, says Millar,
“after exhibiting a general view of the powers of the mind, and
explaining so much of the ancient logic as was requisite to gratify
curiosity with respect to an artificial method of reasoning which had
once occupied the universal attention of the learned, he dedicated all
the rest of his time to the delivery of a system of rhetoric and belles
lettres.” Another of those who attended his classes at Glasgow says that
even after he became Professor of Moral Philosophy he would from time to
time give lectures on taste and literature, and it must have been one of
these that Boswell heard in 1759. Art, the drama, and music were always
favourite objects of his speculations, and doubtless the substance of
his essay on the _Imitative Arts_ was delivered from time to time in the
University. Millar says Smith never appeared to greater advantage than
as a lecturer:—
“His manner, though not graceful, was plain and unaffected, and as he
seemed to be always interested in the subject, he never failed to
interest his hearers. Each discourse consisted commonly of several
distinct propositions, which he successively endeavoured to prove and
illustrate. These propositions when announced in general terms had,
from their extent, not unfrequently something of the air of a paradox.
In his attempts to explain them, he often appeared at first not to be
sufficiently possessed of the subject, and spoke with some hesitation.
As he advanced, however, the matter seemed to crowd upon him, his
manner became warm and animated, and his expression easy and fluent.
In points susceptible of controversy you could easily discern that he
secretly conceived an opposition to his opinions, and that he was led
upon this account to support them with greater energy and vehemence.
By the fulness and variety of his illustrations the subject gradually
swelled in his hands and acquired a dimension which, without a tedious
repetition of the same views, was calculated to seize the attention of
his audience, and to afford them pleasure as well as instruction in
following the same subject through all the diversity of shades and
aspects in which it was presented, and afterwards in tracing it
backwards to that original proposition or general truth from which
this beautiful train of speculation had proceeded.”
Another old pupil dwelt upon his “animated and extemporaneous
eloquence,” especially when he was drawn into digressions in the course
of question and answer. Smith himself attributed his success very
largely to the vigilant care with which he watched his audience; for he
depended very much upon their sympathy. “During one whole session,” he
is reported to have said, “a certain student with a plain but expressive
countenance was of great use to me in judging of my success. He sat
conspicuously in front of a pillar: I had him constantly under my eye.
If he leant forward to listen all was right, and I knew that I had the
ear of my class; but if he leant back in an attitude of listlessness I
felt at once that all was wrong, and that I must change either the
subject or the style of my address.”