Life

Adam Smith was born in the small town of Kirkaldy (population about 1,500 at the time), on the eastern coast of Scotland, in 1723. The precise date of his birth is not known; we only know that it must have been a few weeks after the death of his father, a customs officer, which occurred in January, and before 5 July, the day of his christening. The young Smith had a placid childhood, raised by his mother Margaret with the help of relatives – a moderately well-to-do family of landowners – until 1737, when he moved to Glasgow in order to attend the local university. Among his teachers, his favourite was Francis Hutcheson, whom we met in the previous chapter (§ 4.9).

At the time, fourteen was not an uncommon age to enter university, which was in fact a sort of upper secondary school. The young Adam had already studied some Latin in Kirkaldy, and was immediately admitted to Greek lectures; he also took lessons in logic, which apparently followed the Aristotelian tradition but also included some recent developments (Descartes and Locke), in natural philosophy, in mathematics and physics (Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia mathematica) and in moral philosophy (with Francis Hutcheson).

In the Scottish educational system, at all levels, the students paid their teachers course by course.