Repository: UIHistories Project: Convocation - 1930 [PAGE 9]

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at all, there must be Stabilizing fore I which are not scientific and the world up to the pre ent has been wise not to a< ept Galileo and Kepler and N ton and Darwill and instein, great scientists though they were, as its stabilizing forces." In short, no moral significance can he attach 1 to the laws of physical science unless we helieve that there is an

ultimate underlying directive intelligence originating the

physical phenomena in question. The latest thought of physical theory seems to he in this direction. Those who were so ready to accept the mechanistic theory of the universe did so on the ground that physical laws explained origins and causes as well as operations. This is a common mistake. Whatever else scientific discovery and material advance have done, they certainly have made possihle the exercise of tremendous power hy a single individual. Before the present generation one man's strength was, generally speaking, hut the strength of one. With modern discoveries and the opportunity to use them one man may exert the strength of thousands. The presence of destructive power is not a restraint upon its use. The restraint upon its use must he moral, or spiritual, and it is in the development of the moral and the spiritual that we must find afety and happiness in the use of these tremendous agencies of power. H e r e is a lesson for the next generation; here is a lesson for society in general. Here is a task that lies largely and primarily upon you and young people like you who are going out to take up the burdens that we older <nes must now lay down. It is of vast importance, oi coun , for the welfare of mankind that these physical agencies he developed. It is of far more importance that men should know how to use them and how to restrain themselv in their use. And so we must go hack to some old principli I of COndUCl—the law of love, self restraint. r ird for one anotli r\s rights rather than the free, tin limited expression of our own; due respect for the opin ions of othei , hut not a holy worship of them; due respect for what are called "new tilings hut only after we ha\

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