Excerpt from Authorship of the Book of Mormon, Vol. 30: Psychologic Tests of W. F. Prince Critically Reviewed

Assume, if you please, that some psychologist obsessed by an emotional conflict over masonry, or other secret societies, had undertaken the application of rigorous psychological tests to the problem of the authorship of the Book of Mormon. In all probability his tests would have failed in their rigor. Finding that the content of the Book of Morthon had quite certainly been influenced by the Masonic conflicts of the time, his own compulsive archaic mode of reacting would tend to play him a trick according to well known hysterical procedure. That is to say: his unconscious compulsion toward archaic modes of thinking in relation to secret societies would probably compel him to project his own complex into Smith, only to rediscover it where he had placed it. Then it would compel him to justify his discovery by a special plea based upon specially selected material accompanied by the ignoring of all evidence which tends to contradict his obsession. Thus he would prove to his own satisfaction and that of others similarly obsessed, that Smith was dominated as he himself is being unconsciously controlled. But how does this hypo thetical procedure differ in its visible factors from Dr. Walter Prince's application of rigorous psychologic tests? We shall see that there is no difference.

Let us now assume another type of psychologist, one who has no subconsciously working obsessions to read into the situation; one who uses mature intellectual methods instead of the archaic ones. How would such a person proceed with the application of rigorous psychologic tests to this prob lem. First he would do a little reading to discover all the historic factors of the problem. Among the seven persons who might possibly have contributed to the contentsof the Book of Mormon, he would never arbitrarily choose one as its author, and then justify his choice by a pettifogging special plea. On the contrary his rigorous psychologic tests would have been applied with equal rigor to all possible authors to discover with whom rests the preponderance of evidence. This would be a better means of determining the choice be tween the possible authors instead of using mystical psycho logic procedure to justify a choice, perhaps determined by unconscious subjective conditions, existing in the psychologist.

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