The flyleaf, 1968

THE FLYLEAF

PUBLISHED BY THB

FRIENDS OF THE
FDNDREN LIBRARY

AT RICH UNIVERSITY
HOUSTON, TEXAS

THE TiyiEkf

Quarterly
Vol. XIX, No. 1 October 1968

FROM THE LIBRARIAN

The Librarian wishes to announce that Professor
Edward Norbeck, Chairman of the Department of Anthro-
pology and Sociology, has resigned as Editor of the
FLYLEAF. Professor Norbeck served as Editor since
June of 1961, and we wish to thank him for his interest
in the Fondren Library and the work of the Friends'
organization.

We have a new Editor: Dr. Hardin Craig, Jr.,
Professor of History, who resigned his post as Librarian
at the end of June of this year after fifteen years of
service and leadership. It is a matter of special pride
and joy for all of us that Professor Craig is willing
to continue his association with the Library he helped
to shape through this editorship. Many of us in the
Fondren and among the Friends of the Fondren will find
our work easier because we are able in this way to keep
Dr. Craig at our sides.

This is a good time, too, to recognize the long-
term and continuing service of Raemond Craig as Publi-
cation Chief for the FLYLEAF. In every issue since
that of February, 1955, Mrs. Craig's name has appeared
with those of the several editors, and we know how much
her careful and timely work has meant to the publica-
tion. So, we now have a husband and wife team with
special qualifications indeed for the task we so con-
fidently place in their hands.

Richard L. O'Keeffe,
Librarian, Fondren Library

THANKS FROM A FRIEND

The ex-Librarian wishes to take this opportunity
of thanking the Friends of the Fondren Library for
making his change-over of positions so pleasant.

Together with the members of the Library Staff,
the Friends arranged a memorable party at Cohen House,
complete with delicious refreshments, handsome gifts,
and heart -warming expressions of friendship.

The ex-Librarian has been officially a full-time
faculty member since last July, but the party of Sep-
tember 20 made this seem true. He has turned over
the Library to the able management of Richard O'Keeffe,
but he will always remember his library friends, with
or without the capital "F". Nor will he be far away,
in his office with the History Department on the
fourth floor of the Fondren, and his new post as
Editor of the FLYLEAF.

Hardin Craig, Jr.

****************

RESEARCH CENTER

The January, 1969, issue of the FLYLEAF will con-
tain a feature article about the Fondren' s new Research
Center and its director, Richard H. Lytle, who is also
the Rice University Archivist.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR FRIENDS

In the July, 1968, issue of the FLYLEAF we ex-
pressed the wish that the Friends help toward the pur-
chase of a private library of Austro -Hungarian history,
politics, fine arts, and literature.

From a Rice University news release of September
25, which appeared in the Houston Press, many of our
Friends will already have learned that we were referr-
ing to the Swift Collection and that a gift from the
William Stamps Farish Fund made possible its purchase
by the University. We are delighted to have the
strength of a local special collection added to the
increasingly important Austro -Hungarian Collection of
the Fondren Library through the generosity of Houston's
William Stamps Farish Fund.

We should like to present a new opportunity to
purchase a special bibliographic publication for the
Fondren. This is the recently announced Catalog of
the Latin-American Collection of the University of
Texas Library, which the G. K. Hall Co. of Boston will
publish sometime after April of 1969, in thirty-one
volumes. Until April 30, 1969, the price for this set
will be $1700; after that time it will be $2100. Since
the Latin-American collection at the University of
Texas is a distinguished one, and Rice has considerable
and growing interest in Latin-American studies, it is
a matter of considerable interest to the Fondren and
to faculty members like Professor James A. Castaneda,
Chairman of the Department of Classics, Italian, Portu-
guese, Russian, and Spanish, to have this set.

Friends of the Fondren Library are invited to con-
tribute all or part of the necessary purchase price;
such gifts are tax deductible, gratefully appreciated,
and marked by appropriate book plates and other ac-
knowledgments .

R.L.O.

THE MAN OF LETTERS IN A WORLD OF SCIENCE

by

George Williams

Professor of English

A Rice Alumni Distinguished
Scholar Lecture presented
in Hamman Hall
October 20, 1965

"Man of Letters" is a slippery phrase. It may
include the merest amateur enthusiast or collector,
the professional scholar, the sharp critic, and the
actual creator of literature. But since the last
named, the literary artist, is the star around whom
the whole show revolves, we might not lose too much
if we focused on him, and glanced only occasionally at
the others, just to assure them that they are still a
part of the performance. That is what I am going to
do in speaking here of the "Man of Letters."

The other part of my title, "the World of Science,"
is easier. I imagine that nobody can possibly doubt
that we are living in the midst of a world of science.
Right here in Hamman Hall we are almost completely
surrounded, hemmed in, by science. Over there are
three Engineering Buildings; over there is the Chem-
istry Building; over there and there, the Biology and
Geology Buildings; over there, the Space Science Build-
ing; and directly in front of me, I understand, is to
be the Mathematics and Computer Building. The only
place left open is to the rear- -a thoughtful gesture,
no doubt, to help men of letters make a graceful exit
when the time comes.

We are all surrounded by and immersed in science

every day. We participate in the scientific revolution
when we flip a light switch, drive an automobile, look
at television, swallow our vitamin pills, or talk into
a microphone. Science touches us much more closely
than nature does. How long has it been since any of
us sucked a real orange instead of opening a can of
frozen juice? Or saw a real live chicken, with feath-
ers, instead of a pale and pimply glob of flesh that
was killed by machine, plucked by machine, cut up by
machine, and packaged by machine? Or since we drank
milk not flavored with paraffine? (However, I did
see, the other day, an advertisement for a specially
featured toothbrush- -one that required neither cord
nor battery.)

Scientists from Huxley on down have not been
loath to remind us of our almost total dependence on
science. Typically, the editor of Science magazine
wrote, very soundly and indisputably, not long ago:

Take away science and technology from
our civilization, and there would re-
main only chaos and starvation. We
exist in complete dependence on an
organizational and production complex
which provides food, clothing, shelter,
and the common defense.

Another writer in Science agrees: "Experimental
science . . . has grown to dominate our society. Man
has discovered that he can rarely think or act independ-
ently of the influence of Science." The poet Robert
Graves was altogether right when he said that "The world
now stands in far greater awe of /Scientists] than of
all living presidents, crowned heads, tycoons, scholars,
and ecclesiasts." The degree of official respect that
science enjoys in America may be judged by the fact
that, of all the billions of dollars in federal funds
allocated for research in this country, 961 goes to
the physical sciences, 4% for psychology and social
research- -and what is left over, for the humanities.

In a world so overwhelmingly dedicated to science,
you wold think that the men and women who create and
are concerned with literature- -the novelists, play-
wrights, poets, and even the critics and scholars --
would likewise be dedicated to the cause of science.
You would think that an age so pervaded by the scien-
tific outlook, so aware of science's almost incredible
achievements, so beholden to science for most of its
material goods, and often for very life itself- -would
have produced a flood of novels, stories, dramas, and
poems extolling science and glorifying scientists.

But no such thing has happened. Our major writers
(not only in America but in the whole Western world)
have remained profoundly silent about the obvious
blessings of the scientific revolution. Faulkner and
O'Neill, Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, Dos Passos
and Arthur Miller, Lawrence Durrell and Sean 0' Casey,
Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas --you look in vain through
their works for any genuflection toward science.

This does not mean that writers have invariably
ignored science or its results. In particular, many
modern writers- -novelists, dramatists, and poets --
have written about the most obvious and omnipresent
results of the scientific revolution: the industri-
alization, the urbanization, and the commercialization
of modern life--writers like Dreiser, D..H. Lawrence,
Steinbeck, Faulkner, Arthur Miller, and so on, right
up to Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti and Kerouac and
Mailer. But though most modern writers have been in-
tensely aware of what modern science has done to modern
life, one examines their works in vain for any enthu-
siasm about the industrialization, urbanization, and
commercialization that have resulted from the scien-
tific revolution. Rather, the tone of these writers
has been almost unfailingly satiric, or bitter, or
resentful, or tragic.

So far as I know, only two American poets of any
consequence in the twentieth century have welcomed

this new industrialized, urbanized, commercialized
age. One was Carl Sandburg fifty years ago. But even
Sandburg no longer celebrates Chicago, "hog butcher of
the world." Instead, he has retired to his goat -farm
in North Carolina, and now writes nostalgically about
the days of Abraham Lincoln. And the other was Hart
Crane --who committed suicide at the age of thirty-
three .

If there has been any drama at all in America, in
the present generation, dealing sympathetically with
science, or with the industrialization, urbanization,
and commercialization of modern life, I don't know it.

As for fiction, only one significant American
novelist, since Sinclair Lewis wrote Arrowsmith in
1925, has written a serious novel about science. This
was Pearl Buck, whose pot-boiler novel Commander the
Morning (1959) was a fictionalized (and deeply dis-
turbed) account of the development of the atomic bomb.
Among the 30,000-odd novels published in America since
World War II, I have been able to locate only 17
serious novels about science. Eleven of these were
really stories of very human scientists (operating in
a bureaucratic or university framework) undercutting
or betraying one another, or betraying science itself,
out of their material ambitions or personal jealousies;
and the others turn out to be satires on science, or
spy-stories, or tales of physicists dying of atomic
radiation.

There seem to be only two classes of imaginative
literature in which science appears with some regular-
ity. One is a steadily diminishing trickle of so-
called "science -fiction" (usually involving a "mad
scientist") ; and the other is a flood of dramatized
television commercials demonstrating the scientific
virtues of soaps, deodorants, and aspirin.

II

The failure of men of letters to hop aboard the
world of science has been notorious for a long time,
and has been very apparent since the beginning of the
scientific revolution around the end of the eighteenth
century. At first, there was a fumbling, half -literary
half-philosophical conflict between champions of the
"objective" world and of the "subjective" world--with
writers like Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Carlyle
opposing the objective realists and the utilitarians.
At about the same time, rejection of science's most
lusty offspring, industrialism, appeared in writers
like Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Scott, and any number
of other romanticists who deliberately turned their
backs on the "dark satanic mills," and found their
ideas elsewhere than in the new industrial age. Later
in the nineteenth century, the famous controversy be-
tween T. H. Huxley and Matthew Arnold re-emphasized
the reality of the chasm lying between the world of
letters and the world of science.

And in just the last three or four years, an
acrimonious debate between the novelist-scientist C.
P. Snow and the Cambridge scholar F. R. Leavis has
again attracted attention to the mutual intransigence
of what Snow calls the "Two Cultures." As Snow says,
"The intellectual life of the whole of western society
is increasingly being split into two polar groups . . .
at one pole we have the literary intellectuals . . .
at the other, scientists." Furthermore, he says, "this
tendency of the two cultures £o withdraw from each
othefD appears to get stronger," rather than weaker.
"Thirty years ago," Snow says, "the cultures had long
ceased to speak to each other; but at least they man-
aged a kind of frozen smile across the gulf. Now the
politeness is gone, and they just make faces." A re-
cent writer in Science magazine agrees: "Communica-
tion between the scientist and the humanist has broken
down;" and the editor of Science complains that "the
gap between scientists and other citizens is growing."

Many scientists have echoed these observations,
and have deplored the gulf separating science and
letters. As a matter of fact, it looks as if every
time a scientist nowadays addresses the general public,
he can be depended upon to make an earnest appeal for
better understanding and communication between the two
cultures. By "understanding and communication" the
scientists imply, I suppose, sympathetic understanding
and communication- -compatibility, concordance, rapport,
minds attuned to the same wave-lengths. To achieve
this sympathetic understanding and communication,
scientists advocate an educational system that would
"give almost continuous exposure to science" from the
cradle to the graduate school. And ever since World
War I, educational philosophers, professional educa-
tors, and virtually all American universities have
been striving heroically to produce graduates who will
have one foot in the world of science, and the other
foot in the world of letters. Students in the sciences
have been required to take courses in the humanities;
and students in the humanities have been required to
take courses in science. But these requirements don't
seem to have done much good in improving understanding
and communication between the two worlds. The net re-
sult (so far as I have been able to observe) has been
that far the greater part of these captive students
(forced into courses they do not want) suffer through
two or three years of boredom, resentment, impatience,
and a sense of time wasted doing busy-work they don't
like, don't want, and don't need. And their instruct-
ors suffer from having to deal with students who feel
bored, resentful, impatient, and frustrated- -students
who, at best, acquire only a confused smattering of
the subjects into which their noses have been rubbed
so forcibly, and who (when they leave the required
courses) make a special point of forgetting them as
soon as possible.

Conceivably, any of us might profit from an inti-
mate knowledge of anything- -even say, medieval Bulgar-
ian folk -poetry, or the nematode worms of British

10

Honduras, or the methods of dressing up in a space -suit.
And certainly anyone who really wants to learn about
any of those things should be encouraged. On the other
hand, the expanse of even highly specialized areas of
research has grown so enormous --and is widening so
rapidly and immensely every day and hour- -and life is
so short --that forcing students to spend two or three
years picking up a smattering of knowledge about sub-
jects they don't like and (except by the most remote
of chances) will never use, seems to be a waste of
time that should be employed more profitably- -or at
least more agreeably.

Of course, if the system really worked- -if sympa-
thetic understanding and communication between the
world of science and the world of letters were really
achieved by this system- -the system might be defended.
But, by and large, all the efforts of American colleges,
during the last two generations, to bridge the gap be-
tween the two worlds have proved futile. Indeed, as
C. P. Snow said, and most people agree, the gulf be-
tween them is growing wider all the time.

On the one hand, science professors still suggest
to their students that courses in literature aren't
very important --"because you can read the books your-
self, without having to take courses." And the editor
of Science himself wrote casually not long age: "After
the rigors of training in science, the subject content
of the humanities seems hardly more difficult than a
good novel." This must be true --there can be no doubt
about it --for only last week a letter from the circula-
tion department of Science assured me that "What you
read in Science is authoritative because Science is
written, edited, and owned by scientists." On the
other hand, men of letters, in spite of all the plead-
ings of scientists for better understanding and commu-
nication, more sympathy and concordance, continue to
give science the cold shoulder.

Why is this? Why is the gulf between the two

11

cultures as wide as ever- -if not wider, as all the
scientists say it is?

Ill

In trying to suggest answers to this question, I
want to make it very clear that I am not speaking of
either men of science or men of letters as individuals ,
but as representatives of their separate cultures,
practicing their professions. What I am talking about
is science and letters as two different disciplines,
two different systems of values, two different ways of
approaching the world, two different cultures. And I
am asking why it is that they never can get together.

There are a lot of reasons- -but they all add up
to the fact that neither system can make any really
significant approach to the other without denying
something vital and essential within itself.

Let me illustrate. In science the struggle is
always to include the concrete example within a gen-
eralized system which tends to move even farther, if
it can, into an abstract mathematical formula. But
in literature the struggle always moves in the opposite
direction --toward expressing the general and the ab-
stract in terms of the concrete. As a matter of fact,
if the general and the abstract are not expressed in
terms of concrete imagery, we don't have literature;
we have philosophy, or moralizing. Furthermore,
though literature may express general laws of nature
or of man's life in concrete imagery, it doesn't need
to--any more than music or painting needs to express
such laws. It would be very difficult to discover
laws of nature and of life in, say Alice in Wonderland
or an Arabian Nights tale. More important, still,
even when literature does busy itself with general
laws, nobody cares very much whether the general laws
illustrated are true and verifiable, or false and
imaginary. Thus, nobody nowadays puts any stock in
the general laws about the gods that Sophocles illus-

12

trated in Oedipus Rex; very few people think that the
Book of Job presents a satisfactory theological system;
not many people believe in the good-are - rewarded- and-
the -evil -are -punished philosophy of the great Victorian
novelists; and Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) is hardly the
last word in scientific philology or even good socio-
logy. But the situation is not like this in science.
In science, it does make a difference whether the gen-
eral law is true and verifiable. In literature, all
that matters essentially is the expression of a per-
sonality in concrete imagery.

This, then, is one of the absolute and irreconcil-
able differences between science and literature. There
are many others --as, for example, that science is con-
cerned with types, literature with individuals. Science
is interested in trees, clouds, rockets, schizophrenics,
and so on --all within a framework of general law. But
literature is interested in a tree, a cloud, a rocket,
a schizophrenic- -and not necessarily- for the sake of
anything but themselves. Another example of incom-
patibilities between science and literature: science
is involved with situations and combinations that re-
peat themselves, or may be made to repeat themselves;
but literature never repeats itself without loss of
virtue. Science is concerned with the predictable;
but who can predict what tomorrow's novel, or play,
or poem, will be like? Science is continually growing
and expanding on itself, so that the science of fifty
years ago is not satisfactory today, and the science
of today will not be satisfactory fifty years from
now; but the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and
Milton and Keats are as satisfactory today as when
they were written long ago. That is why we always
want the last edition of a book of science, and the
first edition of a book of literature.

Still another example of this same incompatibility
between science and literature is that science aims at
establishing a verifiable, and usually objective,
reality over against unreality. But literature has

13

no such intent: its field is imagination, dream, and
personal emotion- -a field that science could not pos-
sibly enter without compromising its entire nature.
Science is bound by principles of induction, logic,
probability, verif iability--but literature is free to
be as crazy as A Midsummer Night's Dream, as improbable
as Tiny Alice, as illogical as Waiting for Godot , as
unverif iable as the tale of the Sleeping Beauty . These
things constitute a major part of reality --perhaps the
most important part. A man of letters cannot turn his
back on them. But how could a scientist ever accept
them?

IV

There are two areas, however, in which science and
literature differ even more irreconcilably, and even
more critically. It is in these areas that, somehow
or another, the human race has to make up its mind
pretty soon.

First, we must understand clearly that science is,
and must be, impartial and impersonal; unless it is
impartial and impersonal, it is not good science.
Furthermore, its overriding dedication is to truth,
mostly objective, but always impartial and impersonal --
free of personal prejudice, personal desire, even
merely personal judgment or evaluation. A medical
scientist may be shocked when he discovers that his
best friend has cancer; but he is no scientist unless,
in spite of his personal desires, he faces up to the
objective truth. In the world of letters, however,
the ultimate values are all personal. This does not
mean (I hasten to say) that there are no other values
in the world of literature --but the ones without which
literature would not be literature are all personal.
Every creative artist (whether in literature or not)
knows this. Henry Moore, the sculptor, said; "The
basis of all art is the human relationship"; Faulkner
said that the essence of literature is "the human
heart in conflict with itself"; George Bernard Shaw,

14

that literature shows "the conflict between man's will
and his environment"; James T. Farrell, that literature
is "a re-creation of social relationships of human
beings"; Henry James, that it is "the human scene," the
"dramatic side of human situations." Human beings,
persons (or personified things) are always involved in
literature.

Critics and scholars sometimes forget the essen-
tially personal quality of literature --simply because
it is so obvious. But literature always concerns per-
sons, or is a person expressing his uniquely personal
reactions. In science, on the other hand, there is
always a deliberate effort to reduce the personal
factor, the personal equation, the strictly personal
element, to zero.

As a matter of fact, science, in recent years,
has eaten away at the whole concept of the dignity of
persons . Science has not intended to do this ; it has
not been deliberate. But it is a fact. Science has
shown human beings moulded by hereditary glandular
traits, environmental influences, and Freudian com-
plexes; descendants of unpleasant ape-like ancestors,
lately arrived in the world; and probably only tem-
porary inhabitants of a minor conglomeration of dirt
and water in an out-of-the-way corner of a minor gal-
axy in an infinite universe. Even writers have accept-
ed this view of man. They no longer write about kingly
men and princely characters --because, as Joseph Wood
Krutch says, "we do not believe that any man is worthy
to be" a king or a prince.

At the same time, however, the writers seem to
have taken an almost perverse delight in showing that
even the sorriest specimens of persons are, as Rupert
Brooke said, "splendid and immortal and desirable," of
"extraordinary value and importance." Why else did
Steinbeck, for example, make the Joads so animal-like--
if not to suggest that even such creatures are worth
while, extraordinarily valuable and important? Why

15

else did Eugene O'Neill write his great plays about
derelicts, prostitutes, dope-addicts, failures in
life? Why else did Faulkner create a world of deca-
dent characters except to show that man "alone among
creatures . . . has a soul, a spirit capable of com-
passion and sacrifice and endurance"? Why else did
Arthur Miller write a play about a washed-out travel-
ing salesman? Or Tennessee Williams a play about a
psychopathic prostitute? Or Norman Mailer a novel
about a psychopathic murderer? Authors today delib-
erately stack all the cards against their characters,
and still maintain (by the very act of writing about
them) that these characters are worth writing about .
The salesman's wife in Death of a Salesman expresses
the idea perfectly, even though" she is talking about
a man who has failed in his work, failed as a husband,
failed as a father, failed as a man: "He's not the
finest character that ever lived. But he's a human
being . . .He's not to be allowed to fall into his
grave like an old dog."

What the man of letters keeps telling the world
of science is that you can't treat a man like an old
dog- -or as an impersonal "case," or a social problem,
or a population statistic, or an item in any other
system of classification. You can't be impersonal
about persons; you can't be impartial about a human
being. However valuable objective, impartial, imper-
sonal truth may be, the individual human being is more
valuable. The man of letters has a grave suspicion
that science doesn't recognize this fact.

Of course, every man of letters who is not a com-
plete idiot knows the immeasurable good that science
has done humanity in prolonging life, alleviating pain,
eliminating much burdensome work, and so on. At the
same time, however, it is pretty obvious to everyone
that the growth of science has not been an unmixed
blessing for humanity. The hydrogen bomb, for example,
is hardly an unmixed blessing; nor the intercontinental
missile; nor the spy-in-the-sky satellite; nor the

16

chemical pollution of our air and streams; nor our
scientific despoliation of nature; nor the modern in-
dustrial system that, for all the material good it has
accomplished, has been a continuing threat to man's
freedom ever since it began; nor the advertising and
publicity devices created by science that have resulted
in the universal commercialization and cheapening of
public taste; nor the very real probability that some
spectacular scientific break-through in the future may
fall into the hands of some dictator, or dictator na-
tion, who will use the discovery to enslave us.

But even more subtle and paradoxical is the pessi-
mism engendered by every new spectacular achievement
of science that seems wholly for the good of man- -for
each such achievement is another victory for the impar-
tial and impersonal methods of science. For example,
who can be anything but joyful over an achievement
such as the victory over polio? Yet even here the
victory was achieved through depersonalized experi-
ments on human beings who were numbered "subjects"
and "controls"; and all who received the vaccine re-
ceived it as impersonal members of impersonal queues
taking impersonal lumps of sugar from impersonal hands,
and dropping impersonal quarters into a box impersonally
provided. I freely admit that it is utterly absurd for
anybody to complain about depersonalization in the face
of this enormous and universal good. But the very fact
that it is absurd (with a kind of ironic existential
absurdity^ is itself tragic. It is what Aldous Huxley
was driving at in his Brave New World- -where science
has succeeded in bringing every material blessing to
mankind, yet has reduced human personality to letters
of the alphabet. The man of letters cannot be happy
when he is caught in this dilemma where he must approve
what he disapproves. That is one reason why, in these
days of all -triumphant science, men of letters are pro-
ducing the most pessimistic body of literature ever
written. As a reviewer in a local newspaper said re-
cently: "Today it seems nearly impossible to find a
book that does not leave the reader distressed, dis-

17

turbed, and appalled." There is a direct relation, I
think, between the triumphs of impersonal science and
the growth of literary pessimism.

The second area in which the world of science and
the world of literature are conspicuously irreconcil-
able is in their attitudes toward order and organiza-
tion. Order and organization lie at the very heart of
science and the scientific process . Science is at
perpetual war with chaos --trying to bring order and
organization out of nature's heedless confusion and
anarchy. This is not only an intellectual principle
of science; it has become a way of life for the modern
scientist. Every modern scientist has become more and
more dependent on organization for carrying out his
work. Unlike the man of letters, he cannot work at
home, or in his private study. He must have a labora-
tory provided by some organization, and staffed by an
organized personnel. To discover almost anything
about nature nowadays, the scientist must have the or-
ganized assistance of an army of engineers, mathema-
ticians, physicists, chemists, operators of computers,
and many other specialists. Without a harmonious
organization of numbers of skilled people- -there would
be little modern science. Furthermore, modern science
cannot operate, or be effective, except in a well-
ordered, well-organized society. Thousands of people
have to work harmoniously together in order for us to
see one television program, or for us to ride in an
automobile, or for us to get the benefit of the polio
vaccine .

Order and organization among people are civiliza-
tion. Civilization, however (as Freud pointed out) ,
rests on repressions of personal impulses and instincts;
and it exists only by the control of individuals in the
interest of the larger organization. The man of letters
would accept this situation with some grace, I imagine,
except that, as Chesterton said, "We never do anything
without overdoing it." As science grows more and more
prominent and powerful, both demanding and creating a

18

still better ordered and organized society- -it does
seem likely that the human being, as an individual
personality, will be more and more controlled, ob-
scured, and absorbed. We saw this happen in the most
scientifically advanced and well-ordered nation of our
time --Germany. We see it happening every day among
ourselves. Most of us have become Organization Men
(or Women) . We have learned to drop neatly into our
designated slot in the traffic organization, the com-
pany organization where we work, the educational organ-
ization where we teach or go to school, the public
health organization, the tax organization, the Western
economic organization, the American political organiza-
tion, and the dozens of sub -organizations, and sub-sub-
organizations, in our community, our church, our work-
ing environment. Each of us has become a faceless
member of the anonymous millions washing along the
freeways twice a day, in and out of the great buildings
four times a day, clicking on the same television show
at the same moment from one end of a time zone to the
other, tens of millions of us hanging simultaneously
on the words of Messrs. Huntley and Brinkley, all talk-
ing the next morning about the same headline --all fit-
ting neatly into the most scientific and best -organized
society the world has ever seen, and all melting toget-
her into impersonal anonimity.

But there are two groups who refuse to participate
in this almost universal organization that has come
with the growth of modern science. Both groups are
composed of desperate people struggling against the
organized dehumanization practiced by our society.
We call one group delinquents. It is not an accident
that, as science has exercised a stronger and stronger
influence toward an ordered society- -alcoholism and
drug- addict ion are increasing; the crime rate is grow-
ing many times faster than the population; mental ill-
ness has reached epidemic proportions ; homosexuality
and sexual irregularities in general are increasing
astronomically; school drop-outs have become a national
danger; students are no longer happy in their school

19

and college experiences ; young people by the millions
are taking to the streets in protest against a social
organization that wants them to react mechanically,
instead of as human beings.

The other group, the companions of the delin-
quents, are the men of letters. Even with the begin-
nings of modern science and the industrial organiza-
tion that resulted from it, men of letters began to
rebel. First there were Blake, Byron, and Shelley;
then Baudelaire, Swinburne, and Thoreau; then Ibsen,
Shaw, and Dreiser; then Sinclair Lewis, Scott Fitz-
gerald, and Eugene O'Neill. And now, when the domin-
ance of science and the accompanying pressures for
order and organization are more powerful than they
have ever been before- -there exists, among men of let-
ters, an unprecedented disaffection with our society,
a deliberate and determined attack on the established
order- -an attack that carries all the way to chaos and
nihilism. We see it in writers like Samuel Beckett,
William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Ionesco, the whole
Theatre of the Absurd, the Beats, Henry Miller,
Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer, and countless others
Kenneth Rexroth summed it all up: "One of the most
important indications that something is wrong is the
complete rejection of our civilization by its creative,
growing, and intellectual community . . . there is
total rejection."

What is wrong seems obvious. For the man of let-
ters, the individual, unique, and independent human
personality represents the final value. But science,
and the civilization that science has created, place
order and organization first; for the sake of order
and organization, individuals and personalities must
be shaped to pattern, or suppressed. Neither side can
give up its position without sacrificing something of
its essential nature. And neither side will give up.

And this is where we came in: the failure of
"understanding and communication" between the two

20

cultures. The failure has always been inevitable.
Sympathy and compatibility between them as disciplines,
or systems, or methods of approaching the world, are
out of the question. It seems to me that the best we
can hope for in "understanding and communication" is
mutual tolerance on the strictly personal level . For
example, I haven't the faintest glimmer of understand-
ing about what my colleagues in organic chemistry,
physics, and space-science are doing here on the campus;
and when we get together we certainly don't talk about
colloids, neutrinos, and medieval English poetics. I
don't understand or communicate with them as scientists,
and they don't understand or communicate with me as a
man of letters. We don't want to bore one another to
death. But, on a simple act of personal faith, and no
more, I fugure that they know what they are doing, and
have as much integrity in their work as I hope I have
in mine. And that, I think, is about as near to
"understanding and communication" as the two cultures
can come just now.

But what about the future? Is there any hope
that the two cultures will ever get together sometime?
Will they eventually reach a state of "understanding
and communication"? Or will one of them replace the
other? Or will both disappear? It would be hazardous
to predict. Maybe both sides will be atomized . . .
which would be a kind of victory for science, after
all. Or maybe Faulkner had the answer in his Nobel
Prize speech: "Man will not merely endure; he will
prevail." Or maybe Aldous Huxley had the answer in
Brave New World, and George Orwell in 1984.

I confess that I myself lean slightly toward the
Huxley-Orwell answer. It is only nineteen years till
1984 --but, with science moving along at its present
clip, a lot can be accomplished toward transforming
human beings into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta types
in nineteen years.

Early in this lecture I said that we are here

21

virtually surrounded by science --with Engineering over
there, Chemistry over there, Biology over there, Geology
over there, Space Science over there, and Mathematics
to be over there. Only to the rear is space open for
retreat. I have a kind of vision about this that I
should like to share with you. I see the non- scientists
battling valiantly for survival against all these odds,
for the survivial of the individual personality. But
I see a losing battle, a lost battle. I see the non-
scientists, still struggling, backed across the parking
lot, through the hedges, out across the street, and on,
as a final refuge, into Pat Quinn's garage, where they
will be stored away with his plastic reindeer, his
Santa Claus, and his Seven Dwarfs. There the non-
scientists will remain in perpetual seclusion, not even
exhibited at Christmas or at Alumni meetings, and en-
joying only an occasional bootleg visit from a few de-
linquents who have escaped the scientific organization,
and persist in the vain old delusion of still wanting
to be persons.

22

MEMORIAL GIFTS

In memory of
Dr. Edgar Altenburg
Chester Atkinson
Russel C. Barbour
Lee Blues tein
Palmer Bradley

William Bridgwater

Mrs. Robert Burden

M. V. Burdette

Mrs. Sage Burrows

Mrs. D'arcy M.

Cashin

John E. Cashman

Mrs. Margaret Ewing
demons

Donor

Mr. § Mrs. James K. Dunaway

Mr. § Mrs. William J. Comerforc

Mr. § Mrs. Homer G. Patrick

Citizens for McCarthy

Benjamin M. Bloomfield

Mr. § Mrs. W. F. Bowman

Mr. § Mrs. Albert Bel Fay

Mr. § Mrs. Charles I. Francis

Mr. $ Mrs. Alvin S. Moody

Cooper K. Rayan

Mrs. W. G. Saville

Mr. § Mrs. W. Mclver Streetman

Mrs. Theodore E. Swigart

Mrs. William Bridgwater

Mr. § Mrs. J. Frank Jungman

Mr. § Mrs. Ernest Knipp, Jr.

Mr. § Mrs. Albert Bel Fay

Mr. § Mrs. Hart Brown

Mr. $ Mrs. R. A. J. Dawson

Mr. § Mrs. Clifford G.

Campbell
Mrs. Gus E. Cranz and

Mrs. John H. Foster
Mr. § Mrs. V. L. Knobb

23

In memory of

Mrs. Margaret Ewing
Cas hman ( con t ' d)

Dr. Thomas M. Cloud

Parker Cushman

2nd Lt. Harold C.

Dai ley, II

Mrs. Caroline Hoxie
Doak

P. J. Dodson

Mrs. Lonnie Downs

D. C. Ellwood

Miss Sarah Gaskill

H. W. Goodrich

Charles P. Goyen

Cecil Grigg

Donor

Mr. § Mrs. Don Meek
Mr. § Mrs. Paul Strong

Mr. $ Mrs. Geroge R. Brown

Mr. § Mrs. Albert Bel Fay

Mr. § Mrs. Ben F. Bedinger
Employees of Internal Revenue
Service (Austin)
Col. § Mrs. H. E. Fackler
Mr. § Mrs. Antonio Furino
Gamma Phi Beta Austin Chapter
Mr. § Mrs. Orville K. Haynie
Mr. § Mrs. Gordon McEntire
Mr. § Mrs. Les Meighan
Lt. Col. $ Mrs. Ted J. Smith
George Van Fleet

Mr. $ Mrs. Robert M. Williams

Mr. § Mrs. Robert M. Williams

Mr. $ Mrs. C. J. Newby

Mr. £ Mrs. Sam E. Dunnam

Miss Pender Turnbull

Mr. § Mrs. George R. Brown

Mr. § Mrs. Paul H. Aves

Mr. § Mrs. Charles W. Hamilton
Mr. § Mrs. Carl M. Knapp
Sarah L. Lane
Mary Leatherwood
Mr. $ Mrs. Dan Moody

In memory of

Cecil Grigg
(cont'd)

Tolar N. Hamblen

Lawrence M. Hermes,
Sr.

W. C. (Chino)

Hildebrand

Mrs. Guy Paine Hill

Oscar Hoi combe

Tom Hope
David N. Horn

Dr. William V.

Houston

24

Donor

Mr. § Mrs. Walter M. Reynolds

Pender Turnbull

Mr. $ Mrs. Willoughby C.

Williams

Mr. § Mrs. Frank B. Lander

Mrs. William Bridgwater

Mr. § Mrs. Charles W. Hamilton

Walter C. demons

Mr. § Mrs. Charles Hillier

Ralph A. Anderson, Jr.
Mr. £j Mrs. George R. Brown
Mr. § Mrs. Albert Bel Fay
Mr. § Mrs. Whitfield Marshall
Mr. § Mrs. Alvin S. Moody
Mr. § Mrs. Dan M. Moody
Mr. § Mrs. W. Mclver Streetman
Mr. i Mrs. F. Talbott Wilson

Mr. § Mrs. Hudson D. Carmouche

Mr. § Mrs. George R. Brown
Pender Turnbull

Mr. § Mrs. Thomas D. Anderson
Mr. § Mrs. James A. Baker
Mr. § Mrs. Andre Bourgeois
Betsy Burrows

Mr. § Mrs. Hardin Craig, Jr.
Mr. § Mrs. Wilfred Dowden
Mr. § Mrs. Joseph A. Hafner,

Jr.
Mr. § Mrs. Charles W. Hamilton

25

In memory of

Dr. William V.

Houston (cont'd)

J. R. Hymers

Charles W. Ireland,
Sr.

Cal Johnson

George G. King

John Henry Kirby, II

Mrs. R. C. Kuldell

Larry Kyle
Louis Leon
William Henry Lloyd
Frederick Lozes

Donor

Lola Kennerly and

Mrs. Luddye Michal
Mr. § Mrs. Carl M. Knapp
Sarah L. Lane

Mr. § Mrs. Ralph D. Looney
Mr. § Mrs. William Masterson
Mr. § Mrs. C. J. Newby
John E. Parrish
Mr. § Mrs. Leon Payne
Mr. $ Mrs. John C. Ridley
Mr. § Mrs. Charles F. Squire
Pender Turnbull
Mrs. William Ward Watkin
Mr. $ Mrs. Willoughby C.

Williams

Mr. § Mrs. A. Lawrence Lennie

Mr. § Mrs. Mel L. Anderson,

Jr.

Pender Turnbull

David S. Howard, Jr.

Mr. § Mrs. Mel L. Anderson,

Jr.

Mr. $ Mrs. Albert Bel Fay
Mr. § Mrs. E. L. Goar
Mr. § Mrs. Alvin S. Moody

Lola Kennerly

Mr. § Mrs. Robert W. Maurice

Mrs. Robert Earle Elam, Jr.

Christi Straub

In memory of
K. E. Luger
Thomas A. McCourt
Walter L. Mangum

Otis Massey

Neill T. Masterson,
Jr.

Margaret Milliken

Mrs. Stanley Moore

Mrs. Hally Ruth

Hall Moseley

Mrs. Julian Muench

George T. Naff

Mrs. Ralph Page

Mrs. R. W. Peebles

Mrs. Leola N.

Phillips

26

Donor

Mr. § Mrs. Thomas D. Smith

Dr. § Mrs. J. V. Leeds, Jr.

Mrs. Charles Leatherwood
Mary Leatherwood
Leta Stillwell

Mr. $ Mrs. George R. Brown
Mr. § Mrs. Carl M. Knapp

Mr. § Mrs. W. Mclver Streetman

Pender Turnbull

Mrs. R. M. Brugger

Mrs, Ruby Butler

Pan American Petroleum

Corporation
Lynne J. Randall
Mrs. Marzon E. Walker

Mrs. Vance M. Morton

General Motors Corporation
Research Laboratories

Mr. § Mrs. George R. Brown

Mary Dunbar

Mr. $ Mrs. J. W. Borskey

Mr. § Mrs. Hart Brown

Mrs. Elton Rhine

Mr. $ Mrs. John B. Evans

In memory of
Torkild Rieber
George Tracy Ross
Chester Sappington

Kathleen E.

Schlotterbeck

Mrs. Hallie Embry
Schroeder

Mrs . Ruth

Schumacher

Mrs. Edgar Smith,
Sr.

Fred Baird Smith,
M.D.

Mrs. William M.

Strazier

John 0. Sue

Mary Trammell

11

Donor

Mr. § Mrs. George R. Brown

Mr. § Mrs. Hudson D. Carmouche

Mr. 6j Mrs. Sam E. Dunnam
Mr. \ Mrs. J. C. Pollard
Mrs. Robert Ray

Mr. § Mrs. Andre Bourgeois

Morris Hite

Members of Mary Gibbs Jones

College
Donald W. Tappan
Mr. § Mrs. Philip A. Wadsworth

Mrs. Fred A. Gordon

Mr. % Mrs. John C. Echols
Officers and Directors of
Citizens National Bank §
Trust Company

Mr. § Mrs. A. Gordon Jones

Dr. $ Mrs. E. Allen Chandler

Mr. § Mrs. A. Gordon Jones

Mr. § Mrs. Homer C. Patrick

Mrs. I. Lee Campbell
Mr. § Mrs. James I. Campbell
Mr. § Mrs. Charles W. Hamilton
Mrs. John M. Seltzer

In memory of

Mrs. Laverne Sterling
Vineyard

Mrs. W. A. Vinson

George Riley

Wadsworth

Gordon R. Wallace

E. L. Watson

Mrs . George

Westerfield

Mrs . Oscar Weyrich

Ruth Wilford

Mrs. Mary Masterson
Williams

Judge Ben F. Wilson

Helena Wilson

Mrs. W. W. Wood

28

Donor

Walter C. Clemons

Mr. § Mrs. Hart Brown

Tom E. Dai ley

Dorothy Daley

Mr. $ Mrs. Charles W. Hamilton

Tom H. Wharton, Jr.

Mr. $ Mrs. F. R. Brotzen
Fondren Library Staff
Richard H. Perrine
Pender Turnbull

Mr. £j Mrs. Robert Williams

Mr. § Mrs. Hudson D. Carmouche

Mr. § Mrs. Albert Bel Fay

Mr. § Mrs. Thomas L. Lewis, Jr

Mrs. Edward W. Kelley

Mr. § Mrs. Brooke Hamilton

Mr. § Mrs. Ernest Knipp, Jr.
Mr. § Mrs. Alvin S. Moody

Mrs. Gordon R. West

Helen E. Hess

29
In honor of Donor

Lillian N. Harkrider Jonathan Lane
C. M. Hudspeth Mr. § Mrs. Hugh E. Gragg

30

FRIENDS OF THE FONDREN LIBRARY
AT RICE UNIVERSITY

President, William V. Ballew, Jr.
Vice-President, Mrs. C. M. Hudspeth
Membership Secretary, Mrs. Charles W. Hamilton
Treasurer, Charles W. Hamilton

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Mrs. Albert Fay
Roger Goldwyn
J. Frank Jungman
Mrs. Ralph D. Looney
Mrs. Preston Moore
Frank Vandiver

Ha/idin Cialg, J/l., EcLutoi, tko, FLYLEAF
Ramond CK&lg, Publication