Struensee had light brown, almost flaxen hair, blue, sharp, and flashing eyes, an aquiline nose, and a high forehead; he was firmly built, and gifted with an admirable ability, great desire for learning, and a most excellent memory.[92] He received his first education at the Orphan School of his native town, where religious instruction was not only treated superficially, but several of his teachers were also given to mysticism. In their lessons they constantly said, "This you must believe, because God has spoken so in the Bible," but offered no proof that the Bible was really the word of God. Struensee concluded from this, that his teachers regarded the Bible as of divine origin, solely because they had been taught so in their youth, and was not satisfied with this. It happened on one occasion that many of his fellow-pupils, of whom several were of notoriously loose morals, declared that they had been suddenly enlightened and converted. All sorts of edifying exercises were at once performed with these young men. Struensee, and others of his school friends, who were not among the enlightened, considered this ridiculous; and the foolish penance which the teachers imposed upon them in consequence, rendered Struensee only the more obstinate. The pietistic teachers declared that it was as godless to go about in ruffles and powdered hair as to commit actual sin. Struensee drew from this the conclusion, that as the former cannot possibly be sinful, consequently excesses are just as little sinful. The religious views of his parents, with which they sought to inoculate their son, also aided to confirm the young man in his free-thinking opinions, as he was too clever not to give the preference to an unfeigned belief in God. The father incessantly told his incredulous son how he, from his youth up, had felt in himself the most powerful workings of grace, and was constantly tormenting him with other religious tenets of a nature more or less abstruse. The mother, who had by her marriage been only confirmed in the misty views she had imbibed from her father, entirely agreed with her husband, and thus did her part to turn her son against his home; and, lastly, the father's ill-applied strictures hardened young Struensee's heart against all the exhortations of his over-pious parents. The sermons which he was forced to listen to on Sunday were powerless to produce any other opinion about religion. He saw persons at church weeping from remorse, and found them after the tears of pious repentance had been shed, no better than they had been before. The result was, that Struensee, in opposition to these hypocrites, became a perfect free-thinker.