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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
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Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original hardcover edition for enjoyable reading.
An excerpt from the book:
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."
An excerpt from the book:
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."
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