The session began on the 10th of October, and soon afterwards came the news of Craigie’s death. Smith detested the sophisms of what he called “the cobweb science” of Ontology, and cared little for the Logic of the schools. He was anxious, therefore, to be transferred to the chair of Ethics, and at the same time formed a design with other friends to procure the appointment of his friend David Hume to the chair of Logic. But the prejudice against Hume proved too strong. “I should prefer David Hume to any man for the college,” Smith wrote privately to Cullen, “but I am afraid the public would not be of my opinion, and the interest of the society will oblige us to have regard to the opinion of the public.” This was from Edinburgh, whither Smith had made what was then (incredible as it may seem) a two-days’ journey from Glasgow, in order to wait upon Archibald, Duke of Argyll, nicknamed King of Scotland, because he exercised a sort of royal influence over all Scottish appointments. At the duke’s levee Smith was duly introduced, and his application was successful. The transfer was effected, and in April Smith was appointed to the chair which he was to adorn for twelve years. It was perhaps the most important event of his life. For a temperament like his, so prone to study and reflection, so averse to the toil of the pen, required some constant external stimulus, some congenial inducement to undertake the task of exposition. His gifts might have remained idle, his talents buried, had not the warm and sympathetic atmosphere of a full, eager, and admiring class-room set his tongue and his more reluctant pen in motion. We need not brood over the might-not-have-beens; but when we think of the power that fortune exercises over men’s lives, we may thank her for assigning Adam Smith at this critical moment to the town and University of Glasgow. By that propitious act she lent powerful aid to the construction of a science that must ever be associated with the prosperity and peaceful progress of mankind. Smith himself has indicated in a general statement the advantages he derived from this professorship:— “To impose upon any man the necessity of teaching, year after year, any particular branch of science, seems, in reality, to be the most effectual method for rendering him completely master of it himself. By being obliged to go every year over the same ground, if he is good for anything he necessarily becomes, in a few years, well acquainted with every part of it: and if upon any particular point he should form too hasty an opinion one year, when he comes in the course of his lectures to reconsider the same subject the year thereafter, he is very likely to correct it. As to be a teacher of science is certainly the natural employment of a mere man of letters, so is it likewise perhaps the education which is most likely to render him a man of solid learning and knowledge.”