Meanwhile he would compliment his listeners, feeding their vanity by praising their ideas in an offhand way. Then, in a series of questions constituting a dialog with a member of his audience, he would slowly tear apart the very ideas he had just praised. He would never directly say anything negative, but through his questions he would make the other person see the incompleteness or falsity of his ideas. This was confusing; he had just professed his own ignorance, and he had sincerely praised his interlocutors. Yet he had somehow raised a lot of doubts about what they had claimed to know.
