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.”
CHAPTER III
THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS
The age into which Adam Smith was born was an age of religious doubt and philosophic curiosity. During his lifetime the governing classes in England, undisturbed by enthusiasms, were little disposed to entertain revolutionary ideas in politics or religion. It seemed to be the function of philosophic thinkers to leave the constitution of a tolerably liberal State and a tolerably lax Church, and to advance in other directions. The fierce storms that bent the course of Selden and Milton and Hobbes had abated. Men tried to forget
“The lifted axe, the agonising wheel,
Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel.”
No one believed that the Deity created kings; many doubted whether there was a Deity at all. Since the great days of Athens, philosophy had seldom reaped a richer harvest than in Great Britain during the eighty years that followed the Act of Union. Newton’s Principia, and the philosophy of Shaftesbury, Clarke, Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Butler, as well as of Hume and Adam Smith, all fall within this period. Speculative discovery went hand in hand with mechanical invention. The poetry of enthusiasm, religious and political fervour, persecution, martyrdom, with all their heroic and squalid accompaniments, preceded and followed this prosaic illumination. It was a chapter of dry light between two of heat and fire and smoke. Reason reigned; and as reason seldom wears an air of originality, we need not wonder if later ingenuity has discovered that all these philosophers borrowed their doctrines either from the ancients or from one another or from foreigners.