Rice University - Campanile Yearbook (Houston, TX)

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IN ME MORI AM s STOCKTON AXSON EDWARD ANDREW PEDEN

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TO RICE NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE Ambition and intelligence of mind brought you to this institution. Industry and upright- ness of character have kept you here. All four of them you will continue to need for satis- faction in work and distinction of achievement. Of the next best qualities for your future, I should place in the front line fortitude, faith, and friendliness, that is to say, courage in the presence of physical danger or political problem or spiritual discipline; confidence in your judgment, your fellows, your country, and your religion; and kindliness to men in all walks of life, and to horses and dogs, and their kind. And I am of course well aware that you have already had and met many an occasion for the exercise of the foregoing familiar virtues. With respect to fortitude, you will recall that the Founder of the Rice Institute was a man of resolute fortitude. He believed with Pericles that the secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is a brave heart, and with Pindar that the fortunes of the world follow heroic souls. You will agree with all three. For my own part, I know of no mathematical formulae that have worn quite as well as these equations of Pindar and Pericles, and I earnestly pray that neither courage, nor freedom, nor happiness may ever fail the for- tunes of the present foundation. In the next place, faith is fundamental to all enterprises of the human spirit. It is the first word in the experience of human nature and in our day it is the last word in the science of external nature. When writing his preamble to legislation for ways of temperance and justice, Plato put following God first, while to Plotinus, love, beauty, joy, and worship were forever building, unbuilding, and rebuilding in each man ' s soul and in the soul of the whole world. Here again we come upon ancient formularies that are independent of place or period. Their tenets are therefore timeless, and thus always timely. Their perennial re- vival restores passion for living and awakens anew its energies of love and hope and of faith in the future of man. And what shall I say of friendliness? Only this. Some time ago I said to undergraduates that in the long run the forces of the universe are friendly to us, and the saying is as true as anything the Bellman said thrice. The beneficent agencies throughout the ages have been winning out over the malevolent ones, otherwise we should hardly be here. And next to the love of God and of the family circle, I have encountered nothing on the personal side more constant than the love of a man for his friend. I shall remember while the light lives yet, and in the darkness I shall not forget, said one of them. That, I should very much like to think, is the measure of our loyalty to the graduates of this institution and of their loyalty to Rice, and I trust that from time to time you of nineteen thirty-five may give the Trustees and Faculty not only opportunity to validate their share therein but also occasion to rejoice in your own. So long as these enduring loyalties shall last, so long shall love of learning illumine this house and our sons and daughters pursue it. —EDGAR ODELL LOVETT.

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