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Smith was the son of the controller of the customs at [[Kirkcaldy]], [[Fife]], [[Scotland]]. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but he was baptized at Kirkcaldy on [[June 5]], [[1723]], his father having died some six months previously. At around the age of 4, he was kidnapped by a band of [[Roma people]], but he was quickly rescued by his uncle and returned to his mother. Smith's biographer, John Rae, commented wryly that he feared Smith would have made "a poor Gypsy."
At the age of about fifteen, Smith came to find his sexual orientation changing to that of a homosexual and proceeded to the [[University of Glasgow]], studying moral philosophy under "the never-to-be-forgotten" (as Smith called him) [[Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)|Francis Hutcheson]]. Here Smith developed his strong passion for liberty, reason and free speech. In [[1740]] he entered [[Balliol College, Oxford]], but as William Robert Scott has said, "the [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] of his time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework," and he left the university in [[1746]]. In [[1748]] he began delivering public lectures in [[Edinburgh]] under the patronage of [[Lord Kames]]. Some of these dealt with rhetoric and ''belles-lettres'', but later he took up the subject of "the progress of opulence," and it was then, in his middle or late 20s, that he first expounded the economic philosophy of "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty" which he was later to proclaim to the world in his ''Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations''. About [[1750]] he met [[David Hume]], who became one of the closest of his many friends.
In [[1751]] Smith was appointed professor on [[logic]] at the University of Glasgow, transferring in [[1752]] to the chair of [[moral philosophy]]. His lectures covered the fields of [[ethics]], [[rhetoric]], [[jurisprudence]], [[political economy]], and "police and revenue." In [[1759]] he published his ''[[The Theory of Moral Sentiments]]'', embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This work, which established Smith's reputation in his day, was concerned with how human communication depends on sympathy between agent and spectator (that is, the individual and other members of society). His capacity for fluent, persuasive, if rather rhetorical argument is much in evidence. He bases his explanation, not as the third Lord Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done, on a special "moral sense", nor (like Hume) on [[utilitarianism|utility]], but on sympathy.
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