380 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
The Rt. Hon. Charles Scott Dickson, The Lord Justice-Clerk. 
By The Rt. Hon. Lord Salvesen. 
(Read January 8, 1923.) 
Charles Scott Dickson was born in Glasgow on 13th September 1850, 
his father being a well-known family doctor in that city. He was educated 
at the High School of Glasgow, from which he passed to Glasgow University, 
where he took his degree as M.A. His academic education was completed 
at Edinburgh University, where he attended the law classes necessary to 
fit him for his future career. He gave early promise of the distinction to 
which he afterwards attained, for he took his degree with honours in 
Mathematics and Mental Philosophy — an unusual combination, — which 
testified alike to his industry and his aptitude for acquiring knowledge in 
wholly divergent fields of mental activity. In neither did he pursue his 
studies in after life, and it cannot be said that either had much attraction 
for him when his qualifying course of study came to an end. A genius 
for mathematics is a rare attribute in the successful lawyer, and the same 
is generally true of metaphysics, although there are distinguished exceptions, 
such as the late Lord Moulton in mathematical science and Lord Haldane 
in philosophy. 
It was wholly otherwise with the science to which Dickson intended to 
devote his chief energies. He was a born lawyer, although never a 
philosophical jurist, and the lectures on law which he attended were 
followed by him with absorbing interest. In 1871-2 he carried off the 
second prize in Scots Law against keen and able competitors, and he also 
gained the first of the prizes given by the Faculty of Procurators in 
Glasgow for eminence in a special written examination on the whole 
course of study. In the following session he was second prizeman in the 
Conveyancing Class. 
In order to gain a practical knowledge of his profession he became 
apprenticed to a firm of writers in Glasgow, and qualified as a law agent 
in 1875. For a short time he practised as such, and quickly satisfied the 
shrewd writers who practised in the Sheriff Court that he had exceptional 
gifts as a pleader. All this was, however, merely by way of preparation 
for the career on which he had set his heart. In 1877 he was admitted to 
the Faculty of Advocates, and from that time till his death he was 
continuously resident in Edinburgh. 
