“His manner, though not graceful, was plain and unaffected, and as he seemed to be always interested in the subject, he never failed to interest his hearers. Each discourse consisted commonly of several distinct propositions, which he successively endeavoured to prove and illustrate. These propositions when announced in general terms had, from their extent, not unfrequently something of the air of a paradox. In his attempts to explain them, he often appeared at first not to be sufficiently possessed of the subject, and spoke with some hesitation. As he advanced, however, the matter seemed to crowd upon him, his manner became warm and animated, and his expression easy and fluent. In points susceptible of controversy you could easily discern that he secretly conceived an opposition to his opinions, and that he was led upon this account to support them with greater energy and vehemence. By the fulness and variety of his illustrations the subject gradually swelled in his hands and acquired a dimension which, without a tedious repetition of the same views, was calculated to seize the attention of his audience, and to afford them pleasure as well as instruction in following the same subject through all the diversity of shades and aspects in which it was presented, and afterwards in tracing it backwards to that original proposition or general truth from which this beautiful train of speculation had proceeded.” Another old pupil dwelt upon his “animated and extemporaneous eloquence,” especially when he was drawn into digressions in the course of question and answer. Smith himself attributed his success very largely to the vigilant care with which he watched his audience; for he depended very much upon their sympathy. “During one whole session,” he is reported to have said, “a certain student with a plain but expressive countenance was of great use to me in judging of my success. He sat conspicuously in front of a pillar: I had him constantly under my eye. If he leant forward to listen all was right, and I knew that I had the ear of my class; but if he leant back in an attitude of listlessness I felt at once that all was wrong, and that I must change either the subject or the style of my address.” CHAPTER III THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS The age into which Adam Smith was born was an age of religious doubt and philosophic curiosity. During his lifetime the governing classes in England, undisturbed by enthusiasms, were little disposed to entertain revolutionary ideas in politics or religion. It seemed to be the function of philosophic thinkers to leave the constitution of a tolerably liberal State and a tolerably lax Church, and to advance in other directions. The fierce storms that bent the course of Selden and Milton and Hobbes had abated. Men tried to forget “The lifted axe, the agonising wheel, Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel.”