6 John Alexander Smith (1863–1939), philosopher and classical scholar, was educated at Edinburgh and Balliol College where he took a First in Literae Humaniores in 1887. He became a fellow of Balliol in 1891 after which he was the Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy and Fellow of Magdalen 1910–36. He was a distinguished scholar of Aristotle, and his translation of De Anima appeared in 1931. For the intellectual influence of J.A. Smith and other Oxford philosophers see James Patrick, The Magdalen Metaphysicals: Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford, 1901–1945 (1985).