thomas moore johnson

home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives On the Second Day of Christmas in July…

On the Second Day of Christmas in July…

By Super Admin   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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… we give to you The Duality of Truth.

Gifted to Thomas Moore Johnson by the author of the work, Henry Wagner, M. D., on the Christmas of 1899, this book now resides in our Thomas Moore Johnson Collection of Philosophy.

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In the introduction, the author states that he aims to make known – in simple terms that lay readers can understand – the nature of Truth "as viewed from the standpoint of a student of Hermetic Philosophy."  The body of the text uses various supports from the Bible and ancient philosophical texts, including various beliefs of Ancient Egyptian philosophy, to support the author's proposition that there is One Truth, expressed dually in our world.

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If this book entices you to begin your own investigation into the nature of Truth and philosophy, we here at Special Collections are happy to help, just stop by and see us sometime during these hot July days.

home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives Happy birthday, Thomas Moore Johnson!

Happy birthday, Thomas Moore Johnson!

By Kelli Hansen   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
Posted on

Today is the 162nd birthday of Thomas Moore Johnson, the namesake of the Thomas Moore Johnson Collection of Philosophy here in Special Collections.  What's in the collection?

The graphic above is a Wordle of all the Library of Congress subject headings in the collection – so you can see that it really is a collection of philosophy.  Johnson was interested in Plato and focused his collecting in that area.  The oldest imprint is 1494, and there are several hundred volumes with publication dates from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The majority of the collection dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919) was an attorney, collector, and student of philosophy in Osceola, Missouri. Johnson began collecting Greek texts while a student at the University of Notre Dame and his library eventually grew to about 8,000 volumes.

A portion of his library was presented to the University of Missouri-Columbia Libraries in 1947 by his son, Franklin P. Johnson. Another part of the collection remains in Osceola as the Thomas Moore Johnson Library.