Smith holds a dual and seemingly contradictory view of humanity—on one hand deprecating the 'mob of mankind' as coarse clay, weak, and in a present depraved state with wisdom being rare (a distinction-based, aristocratic-of-judgment view), and on the other hand an egalitarian view that everyone shares the same basic moral faculties, any stranger can pull you toward universal wisdom, and no one is really better than another (as with the porter and the philosopher differing only by circumstance).