Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Works and Life of Walter Bagehot, Vol. 7 of 9
Undoubtedly it is a great literary marvel that so huge a scheme, on so many abstract subjects, should have produced anything valuable, and still more so that it should have pro duced what has been for a whole century a fundamental book on trade and money - at first sight, the least fit for a secluded man to treat at all, and which, if he did treat of them, would seem more than any other to require from him an absorbed and exclusive attention. A little study of the life of Adam Smith, however, in some degree lessens the wonder; because it shows how in the course of his universal studies he came to meet with this particular train of thought, and how he came to be able to pursue it effectually.
Adam Smith was born early in the first half of the eigh teenth century, at Kirkcaldy in Scotland, on sth June, 1713. His father died before he was born; but his mother, who is said to have been a woman of unusual energy and ability, lived to be very old, and to see her son at the height of his reputation as a philosopher. He was educated at school in the usual Scotch way, and at the University of Glasgow and at both he is said, doubtless truly, to have shown an unusual facility of acquisition, and an unusual interest in books and study. As we should also expect, a very strong memory, which be retained till the last, showed itself very early. Nothing, however, is known with precision as to the amount of knowledge he ac quired in Scotland, nor as to his place among his contem poraries. The examination system, which nowadays in England discriminates both so accurately, has in Scotland never been equally developed, and in Adam Smith's time had never been heard of there at all.
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