Their father, Smith Kimont Seth, was the son of a farmer from the Scottish region of Fife and a bank clerk in the head office of the Commercial Bank of Scotland.
Seth was born in Edinburgh and attended George Watsons College.
He was a student of Alexander Campbell Fraser and Henry Calderwood, and won two scholarships.
During most of this time, the corresponding Chair of Logic and Metaphysics was occupied by his brother Andrew Seth Pringle - Pattison.
James's inaugural lecture on "The Scottish Contribution to Moral Philosophy" was subsequently published in The Philosophical Review, the journal he had edited.