Lectures on Jurisprudence [antikvár]

Introduction I. Adam Smith's Lectures at Glasgow University Adam Smith was elected to the Chair of Logic at Glasgow University on 9 January 1751, and admitted to the office on 16 January. He does not appear to have started lecturing at the University, however, until the begiruiing of the next academic session, in October 1751, when he embarked upon his first—and only—course of lectures to the Logic class. In the well-known account of Smith's lectures at Glasgow which John Millar supplied to Dugald Stewart, this Logic course of 1751-2 is described as follows: In the Professorship of Logic, to which Mr Smith was appointed on his first introduction into this University, he soon 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 metaphysics of the schools. Accordingly, 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.' This 'system of rhetoric and belles lettres', we may surmise, was based on the lectures on this subject which Smith had given at Edinburgh before coming to Glasgow, and was probably very similar to the course which he was later to deliver as a supplement to his Moral Philosophy course, and of which a student's report has come down to us.^ Concerning the content of the preliminary part of the Logic course, however—that in which Smith exhibited 'a general view of the powers of the mind' and explained 'so much of the ancient logic as was requisite'—we know no more than Millar here tells us. In the 1751-2 session. Smith not only gave this course to his Logic class but also helped out in the teaching of the Moral Philosophy class. Thomas Craigie, the then Professor of Moral Philosophy, had fallen ill, and at a University Meeting held on 11 September 1751 it was agreed that in his absence the teaching of the Moral Philosophy class should be shared out according to the following arrangement: The Professor of Divinity, Mr. Rosse, Mr. Moor having in presence of the ' Stewart, i.16. The original version of Stewart's 'Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith', in which these remarks of Millar's were incorporated, was read by Stewart to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 21 January and 18 March 1793. ^ See below, pp. 4, 9, JJ, and 15-17. 82818S 9 b