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Show Page 210 meetings on printing, appropriations, and expenditures for schools. From England came a load of new-published copies of Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, edited by Orson and complete with a preface he composed - these were advertised and offered for sale for the first time in Salt Lake. And just before New Year, Orson proposed through the newspapers to open... "An Evening School in Great Salt Lake City, wherein the following branches will be taught: Natural Philosophy, Electricity and Electro-Magnetism, Chemistry, Astronomy..-. Algebra, Surveying, Analytical, Descriptive and Common Geometry, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, Conic Sections, Analytical and Celestial Mechanics, Differential and Integral Calculus...Professor Pratt can furnish students with some twenty copies of Day's Algebra, open six till nine weekday-evenings except Friday, $15 per quarter...school to commence when twenty scholars have subscribed..." 3 Orson's personal efforts to stimulate the intellectual life of Salt Lake were supplemented by the formation at April conference 1855, of the "Deseret Theological Institute," an organization patterned after Joseph Smith's "School of the Prophets." Orson Pratt was appointed a director of the Institute, with a charge from Brigham Young that "this society... will be nothing more than a schoolhouse, an academy, a seminary to teach the brethren all that is good, and then try to get more." Orson met with the other directors to write up a constitution for the Institute, declaring that the "science of Theology embraces a knowledge of all intelligence, whether in heaven or on the earth, moral scientific, literary, or religious. Despite this exalted purpose, Brigham continued to urge a more modest approach..."nothing more than a schoolhouse." For Brigham had become wary of the third apostle. Slowly, with his ruminant mind, he had been digesting the philosophical corpus of Orson's writings and had begun to detect a spirit he did not like. The style he admired, but the tenor was suspect, and some of Orson's propositions struck him with the full force of heresy. ,.4 |
