[7] _Wealth of Nations_, Book I. chap. iv.




CHAPTER II

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