This panacean outlook prompted Hume to remark that "Mr. Sheridan's Lectures are vastly too enthusiastic. He is to do every thing by Oratory."[6] And it is not surprising that the critical, the Johnsons and Humes, should have been distressed by Sheridan's enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that permitted him to posit such unlikely goals and to see himself as the sole authority on elocution. Yet, for every negative reaction, the elocutionists enlisted countless believers. Sheridan and other theorists capitalized upon a number of intellectual currents and social pressures of the era that centered attention upon delivery in speaking and that helped aggrandize this facet of rhetorical training. A number of forces can be isolated, but most relate to the classical inheritance, to the belief that tones, looks, and gestures constitute a natural language of the passions, and to the methodology of science.[7] The classical inheritance was important to the elocutionists because of the impetus given to all language study. Sheridan did no more than echo a common complaint when he worried over the "many bad consequences" attending a neglect of the English language; countless writers addressed themselves to a determination of phonology and pronunciation in the attempt "to methodize" the language. Furthermore, the example of ancient oratory spoke loudly to a people striving to perfect both the individual and social institutions. Any educated man was expected to be able to express himself well in public, particularly if his vocation found him "in the pulpit, the senate-house, or at the bar." The pulpit was a favorite target, and critics regularly lamented the atrocious state of speaking "in the very service of the Most High." The elocutionists and others appear to have been convinced that the doubt and scepticism of the age would be much relieved if only the preachers would learn to speak properly. Theirs seemed the best of all possible religions, and it needed but a vitalization through adequate pulpit oratory to transcend anything accomplished by the Popish devotees on the Continent. Certainly Sheridan's references to the Continent also reflect a strong overlay of nationalism, and the same spirit creeps into his worship of Greece and Rome; but he and the other elocutionists knew that they owed a profound debt to classical rhetorical theory. Beyond supporting language study generally and beyond encouraging an interest in public speaking, ancient rhetoric justified a concentration on delivery.