DSpace at Rice University

An address delivered at the seventeenth commencement convocation of the Rice Institute by Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Law School of Harvard University

Pound, Roscoe, 1870-1964

Some analogies from history

A lecture delivered at the inauguration of the Rice Institute by Senator Vita Volterra, Professor of Mathematical Physics and Celestial Mechanics, and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Rom

Volterra, Vito, 1860-1940

Henri Poincare

A lecture delivered at the inauguration of the Rice Institute, by Professor Emile Borel, Director of Scientific Studies at the Ecole Normale, and Professor of the Theory of Functions in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Paris. Translated from the French by Professor Albert Leon Guerard of the Rice Institute

Borel, Emile, 1871-1956

Molecular theories and mathematics

Menger, Karl, 1902-

Analysis and metric geometry

V MESSAGE TO THE CLASS Ladies and Gentlemen of Rice 1942: Almost exactly twenty-four hundred years ago, a t  about this season of the year and time of the morning, in the old, wooden amphitheatre, beside the rock of the Acropolis, and canopied only by the sunny, transparent sky of Athens, there was enacted for  the first time, and in the presence of thou- sands of spectators, the Agamemnolz of Aeschylus. T h a t  play has been characterized by competent critics as the high- est achievement of the human mind, and by everyone who has read it as a great achievement of the human mind. I ts  opening scene was an innovation in dramatic art .  A watch- man, a common soldier, not to  appear again in the play, ex- claims : “0 God ! when will my toil end ? Lying on the earth like a hound watching the nightly company of the stars, season after season, year after year, waiting for  the signal, keeping myself awake with a song. . . . M a y  God yet send us rest, and light the beacon flame of good news flashed across the night.” Like that  sentinel in the Agamemlzon we are  all soldiers, every man and woman of us, soldiers today, whether as watchmen or  workers : workers in munition factories, work- ers in shipyards, workers in transport, workers in assembly plants; watchmen on wings beyond the sky, watchmen on towers, watchmen on tanks, watchmen beneath the depths of the sea ; watchmen and workers, morning, noon, and night, 243 244 Twenty-Seventh Annual Commencement day in and day out, to  win this war, finally and completely, in the name of justice, truth, and freedom. But how about the other things you came here to  d o ?  When you came here in 1938 I urged you to  start  your work by looking further ahead. Your immediate object, I thought, was to  begin to  plan not only for four years, but for forty years on. T h e  goal of the Rice Institute for you, I said, was to combine in the largest possible measure extensive liberal learning and intensive technical training. I t  was our hope, as it was the Founder’s hope, that in your preparation here for long and useful lives hereafter, each of you would touch life a t  most of the many points of contact the Founder’s bounty affords. H o w  fully and successfully you have taken advantage of the opportunities offered, each of you knows better than I can know. Of a few things, however, I am sure: you have grown in stature, knowledge, and outlook; you have held fast to the steadying influences of your upbringing alike in patriotism and in religion; you have found high ideals, motives, and standards, of morals and manners and mind; and you cling to principles of conscience and conduct, research and dis- covery, that defy the corrosion of time and change. On the other hand, though many of you, indeed most of you, may have absorbed the first shock of recent stark reali- ties which we had already begun to  anticipate in the autumn of 1938, nevertheless all of you have been thrown into con- fusion of thinking by this sudden shattering of most of your prospects and a t  least the indefinite postponement of some of your most cherished plans. But these things also I know: that the freedom we have given you to  think and speak and argue and seek truth forti- fies you to fight to the bitter end for the victory of freedom; that leaders in this conflict will rise from your own ranks, Message to the Class 245 chiefly, among other reasons, because you have taught your- selves to  lead by first teaching yourselves to  follow; that for  the entire duration of the conflict, whatever its length, your rights of individual mastery you will renounce to  the mandates of your country; that  under its brave and resolute leadership you will resort to force of arms, first because you and your fathers have accepted and enjoyed for years the protection of your country, and second because the very ex- istence of its institutions is challenged by aggressive force of enemies’ arms. And I know that, loyally and cheerfully, you will stand to  the last man and woman of you, even unto death, until the rights of all men to  think, to  work, to  wor- ship, and to  serve their fellows be restored to  humankind upon this planet. If you have heard in your hearts what I have spoken out of great pride and faith in you, none the less you must still be asking poignantly W h a t  about the forty years on?  If I have answered that question only indirectly and inade- quately, here again the spirit and inspiration of this place may help you to  an answer. Throughout these four years you have undergone growing pains, growing opinions, grow- ing plans, growing convictions. I trust that throughout your lives, whether long or short, you will always be undergoing growing pains, growing opinions, growing plans, growing convictions. Even in these days, I believe that above the din and duress of battle, whether in factory or field, on sea, or land, or in the air, you will continue to  think and plan for the future, You can no more stop thinking, even in such dire circumstances, than you can stop breathing. You will be plan- ning, ever planning, tha t  this awful business shall never re- cur;  that by the blood of those of you who go  down, and by the brains and brawn of those of you who return, the hard- won gains of the human spirit shall survive, the treasured 246 Twenty-Seventh Annual Commencement seeds of that spirit shall take root once more, and truth and pity, kindliness and generosity, justice and tolerance shall again flourish in the earth, to  the glory of God, and through His  grace, for the healing of men and nations. One word more. T o  my mind it is singularly appropriate that the last words you carry away with you in imperishable memory from this temple of truth, of whose invisible spirit you yourselves are the visible presence, should have been borne on the voice yesterday and this morning of a minister of mercy, whose eloquence and wisdom have challenged, lifted, and re-enforced our determination to strive increas- ingly and unceasingly for a fairer, better, wiser, and brighter world for all God’s creatures, all the sons and daughters of men, after this war. Your predecessors from 1916 to 1941 we sent on their way under an ancient injunction twice used in the Iliads of Homer-the charge of Hippolochus to Glaucus, his son, the charge of Peleus to Achilles, his son. Even so today, with high hopes and all the solicitude of affection, we send you forth under that same Homeric rubic, T o  be brave. T o  win renown, T o  stand the first in worth as in command, T o  add new honours to your native land, Before your eyes your mighty sires t o  place, And emulate the glories of our  race, and charge you of 1942, as a t  the training camp I charged your forerunners of 1917, in lines of the late Sir Henry Xewbolt, T o  set the Cause above renown, T o  love the game beyond the prize, T o  honour, while you strike him down, T h e  foe that comes with fearless eyes; T o  count the life of battle good, And dear the land that gave you birth, And dearer yet the brotherhood T h a t  binds the brave of all the earth. 

Message to the class

Maunier, Ren'e, b. 1887

La societe francaise et ses transformations

Falconer, Robert A. (Robert Alexander), Sir, 1867-1943

Faith being established

Axson, Stockton, 1867-1935

Thackeray the satirist

A sermon preached to the second graduating class of the Rice Institute, by George W. Truett, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas

Truett, George W. (George Washington) 1867-1944

The making of the right kind of life

Mandelbrojt, Szolem, 1899-

Science in the history of civilization

Center for Theoretical Biological Physics

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