The sociologist may theorise, but plain people will remember that men do not gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles. There must be something in the soil which produces such men; something in the poverty that compels exertion; something in the "land of the mountain and the flood" that stirs the imagination; something in the history of centuries of struggle for national and spiritual independence; much in the system of compulsory and universal free education; something of all these elements mingling in the blood that tells, and enables Scotland to contribute so largely to the progress of the world. Strange reticence is shown by all Watt's historians regarding his religious and political views. Williamson, the earliest author of his memoirs, is full of interesting facts obtained from people in Greenock who had known Watt well. The hesitation shown by him as to Watt's orthodoxy in his otherwise highly eulogistic tribute, attracts attention. He says: We could desire to know more of the state of those affections which are more purely spiritual by their nature and origin--his disposition to those supreme truths of Revelation, which alone really elevate and purify the soul. In the absence of much information of a very positive kind in regard to such points of character and life, we instinctively revert in a case like this to the principles and maxims of an infantile and early training. Remembering the piety portrayed in the ancestors of this great man, one cannot but cling to the hope that his many virtues reposed on a substratum of more than merely moral excellence. Let us cherish the hope that the calm which rested on the spirit of the pilgrim ... was one that caught its radiance from a far higher sphere than that of the purest human philosophy. Watt's breaking of the Sabbath before recorded must have seemed to that stern Calvinist a heinous sin, justifying grave doubts of Watt's spiritual condition, his "moral excellence" to the contrary notwithstanding. Williamson's estimate of moral excellence had recently been described by Burns: But then, nae thanks to him for a' that, Nae godly symptom ye can ca' that, It's naething but a milder feature Of our poor sinfu' corrupt nature. Ye'll get the best o' moral works, Many black gentoos and pagan works, Or hunters wild on Ponotaxi Wha never heard of orthodoxy. Williamson's doubts had much stronger foundation in Watt's non-attendance at church, for, as we shall see from his letter to DeLuc, July, 1788, he had never attended the "meeting-house" (dissenting church) in Birmingham altho he claimed to be still a member of the Presbyterian body in declining the sheriffalty.