awuh1

Hi lifej.
As I recall the list was posted by a very cedable source in an old group called AAHISTORYLOVERS.

Raymond Campbell #63 is not well known but IMO should be. This was the man who designed the dust jacket for the first edition of the big book. He also wrote the story called "An Artist's Concept" in the first edition. You can read it in this link
https://silkworth.net/bbstories/380.html It is one of the best early stories.
I love early AA history.....
don't get me started.

DayTrader

Another piece of AA history --

It was Ray C (who designed the dust jacket and wrote the story linked above in the first edition) who, in his story for the AA book MISTAKENLY attributed the quote, "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." to Herbert Spencer.

In future editions of the BB, Bill wrote Appendix II which explains the "Spiritual Experience" being sure to include that for most it is of the educational variety and doesn't necessarily HAVE to be a white-light voice-of-God type of experience like he had. The Appendix is closed by quoting a part of Ray C's BB story (though Ray C didn't receive credit in the Appendix) in which Ray Herbert Spencer was said to have made that statement about contempt prior to investigation. It was not Bill's decision to include this in the Appendix, if I recall what I was taught.

The real story is Herbert Spencer did NOT make that famous (to us in AA anyway) statement. Herbert Spencer, though famous and properly credited with much ("survival of the fittest" probably is his most famous) never said what Ray, and then the Big Book, claimed he said.

The quotation actually came from William Paley. Best of all, even William Paley didn't really say those exact words but he did say some pretty close to it in a book he wrote about 100 years prior to the rise in fame of Herbert Spencer.

So Ray C, incorrectly wrote a quote, attributed it to the wrong guy, then the Bib Book dropped his story but took the inaccurate quote and mistaken source of the quote and put it in Appendix II.

...........and to this day I'm thankful as hell it's in the book. Contempt prior to investigation, I found, was a mainstay of how a self-centered / self-willed person is driven through life and had I not read it in the BB, I may never have considered if it was indeed true for me.

awuh1

I have always found it quite interesting that AA has not corrected the attribution of that quote, even though they know that it is incorrect (I've pointed out the article in the link below to AA's central office. You can read much more about the history of the quote in this link if you are interested. ) https://anonpress.org/spencer/

I must confess that I like to point out the error in the book to "big book thumpers" who treat the book like scripture. After all, the whole point of the quote is to keep an open mind .

sugarbear1

How about some pre-history of AA??

http://j.b5z.net/i/u/10230206/f/Pre_...Book_Bob_S.pdf

http://www.indyaa.org/wp-content/upl...story_2012.pdf

Robert (Bob) Stonebreaker from Indianapolis wrote these. I'm sure there are more online, don't know which one is his final copy. Good read(s).

DayTrader

Maybe it's been kept there against the will of those with the power to choose to change it to attribute the quote correctly to William Paley by a Power greater than them?

Maybe it's been left as-is, along with the line "As wives of Alcoholics Anonymous, we would like you to feel that we understand.... " in a chapter written by Bill Wilson....... who was never a wife...... as just another subtle reminder that it's just a book of instructions for A path to THE solution. It's not THE solution. And maybe they're also there, along with a LOT of other things in there such as "...tell you what we have done" when at first the book was written as a set of directions for what you should do but later was changed to make it more appealing. Maybe they're there to serve as sign posts to it being written by a fallible person/people who make mistakes and occasionally add some fluff to the truth, and even add some stuff that isn't completely true in an effort to be of more help than simple fact-stating would ever have been to begin with.

awuh1

Thanks sugarbear. Stonebreaker did a great job on that project. His collection of pictures is itself a great contribution. The way he weaves the idea of Jung's synchronicity into the early history is wonderful.

As for AA not correcting the errors it knows exist..... I beg to differ. I would refer the central office to a quote from Shakespeare.....
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Hamlet Act 1