Humanities, Philosophy & Other Things

Mormon Literature Sampler: The King Follett Discourse * Joseph Smith   [The President having arrived, the choir sang a hymn. Elder A. Lyman offered prayer. The President then arose and called the attention of the congregation to the subjects which were contemplated in the forepart of the conference.] Because the wind blows very hard, it will hardly be possible for me to make you all hear unless I have your profound attention. I approach a matter of the greatest importance and the most solemn of any that can occupy our attention--that is, the subject of the dead. I have been requested to speak by friends and relatives of Brother Follett, who was crushed to death in a well; and inasmuch as there are a great many in this congregation who live in this city as well as elsewhere who have lost friends, I feel disposed to speak on the subject in general and offer you my ideas so far as I have ability and so far as I shall be inspired by the Holy Spirit to dwell on thi...

Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic Stephen D. Ricks, Donald W. Parry, Hugh Nibley, Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled ( 1991)  Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic I. The Mantic Substratum In his recent study of the gods of the Greeks, Professor Kerenyi compares the classical scholar thumbing through his notes and handbooks in search of an outworn creed with Sir George Gray, who long ago had joined in the feasts and dances of the Maoris and learned their language and legends in order to pluck the heart out of their mystery. 1 The comparison is too sanguine. As long ago as the fourth century, Synesius could report as a quaint oddity the presence in the Aegean islands of peasants who still believed in the Cyclops 2 —but they have long since passed away. No living informant can satisfy the modern scholar's craving for a firsthand introduction to the gods of Greece, and if the investigator goes to the written sourc...