Joseph Smith and the Taxonomy of Intelligence(s), part 4. Text and Context for the King Follett Discourse

You should be righteous, and read parts one, two and three, first. You will at least need to read part three.

The two most important reporters of KFD2 were Thomas Bullock and William Clayton. In the construction of a critical text for KFD2, one important piece of information that the manuscripts of Bullock and Clayton give are their failure points. That is, the points where they failed to tell us what was said. In the other extant reports, this information can often only be inferred by reference to other texts. Bullock and Clayton show us their failures by adding a “-” a dash at certain points. Bullock in particular apparently tried to keep up with the speaker, but when he fell far enough behind, he left a – and then continued with what was currently being said. Some dashes of course may mean other things. For example, a pause by the speaker from fatigue. When the early editors of the Joseph Smith speeches worked them over, they often treated the dashes as commas or periods, or simply ignored them.

Joseph Smith and the Taxonomy of Intelligence(s), Part 3.

In this part (click for parts one and two) we give three short excerpts from the critical text[1] for the King Follett Discourse, (in the book it receives the designation, “KFD2”). Here we are looking at lines 163-166, then lines 172 to 176, followed by lines 180 to 184. There is some variation from the actual critical text, because of the limitations of HTML. Some of the actual critical text appears in over/under style in cases where there are multiple witnesses who do not precisely agree.[2] In the version that appears here, instead of over/under text, the form is ^over_under in succession rather than simultaneous display of text above and text below. Further, there is a color coding employed which shows the source of the text. There is some clear-texting here, but not much.

Lady Ann Conway and Her Questions

The most prolific of the Cambridge Platonists, Henry More, put his views on preexistence into poetry (1647). Ann Conway wrote to him several years later with the following very interesting questions which I have edited slightly for readability:

Lorenzo Snow and Oberlin College, part II

The second part of Lorenzo Snow’s letter (March 1836) to his sister Eliza Roxcy Snow shows a thoughtful disposition and some interesting assumptions about human behavior. It also suggests his respect for Eliza’s thinking.