The Morning herald., 1875-10-01
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The vaSt auditorium at the Cooper IT,
stiiute was completely filed on l$st, Wed,
hesday evening On tie occasion sii 81 TIE de-
liyeryiof Theodore DTiitonpSs hewao ileectniree
:, entitle,iithe "Ptoblehnc cof Life!"91 nGn7eh'
Il He enteredit the platform unattended, and
!. fiDgiAg his hat and edvercoati on the floor,
+ without intspduction began his lecture
Throughout itsb delivery there was an eyi-
dennce Of personal snall feeling and interest pn-
u known in his former methods and styles,
y and when, with impassioned eloquieenMce, he
, made indirect references to his recent trou-
z bles, he exhibited a passion and force
3 which drew down loud cheers! III Beginning
his lecture he observed that the problem
:, Of life, of which he. would treat, was not
that which Huxley with his theories of
!, protopslam, vaaihly soug hit to solve, but
! was that one whicl. was as old as, the ages,
I unsettled as the sea, and yet. ever vital as
human nature. For he supposed that every
man had had the same fair share Of human
experiance;ylthata is every man who Had
I gone far enough into life To 10 feel
the burden and heat Of the day. Every
man who stood at the altar of his marriage
and looked into the cradles of his children,
and ,laid away his dead in hallowed graves
4 --every such man in the hurly-burly Of
everyday lie, asked himself what was the
function, the mystery,the problem Of every
day iife? Solomon, the wise, expressed his.
opinion Of it when he said. "Vanity Of
v.amdes AL is vanity,l' and Jobl the pa
tlent man., said, Cursed be the day in
which I was born" He heard men daily
lnyeighing against the world, and yet he
thought that as God, who made it, called 4
it good; 1t was unbeeoming in men, for
whom he made it, to pronounce it i'll. altt
was rich and great and wonderful world,
created after INT infinite cycles Of years, for
mans happiness and loye, In poetic in
ageries he portrayed the wondrous rich |
ness Of earth, with its productions so omul- I
tltudlnous that the human mind had not
the capacity to grasp the catalogue. And I
out ot this bounty how small Was each
mans p portion ua would accord to man
the attainment Of all the highest ambitions
OF the created universe, he would endow
him with all the possibilities fertile fancy
could suggest, and his possession as COM
pared with existing things was as THE pos
session OF themidget of stately Hence
while the world was great the man share
was little; ambition was vanity, and the
'onl.y MY chance was to surrender it, and obtain
instead the mastery over ones self. The
problem Of life was to find out the duty Of
life and to fulfllit. 1t was not tic attain
ment of wealth nor power nor fame nor
learning, but was, in his Judgment, the de-
velopment of human character. Suppose
1t was the attainment of wealth, or power,
or tame, or greatness, how many men at
tain their ambition, and how many names
Of this age will not posterity willingly let
die? Carlyle said happiness was cheap If
men only knew the proper merchant to ap-
ply to for it; and, although he did not
think the market was glutted with it, i'm
mortal and exquisite was that story of the
King whose malady could be cured only by
wearing the shirt Of the happy man, and {
when he found him he had no shirt. {
My Character was one thing, reputation {
another and sometimes they were as far
apart as the East and different as
day and night Character and reputation /! :,
Why, tue greatest character in all history
made himself Of no reputation. Public Il
men were constantly making and losing
regulations as the stars went down and {
came up; but there was this difference, {
that a star that sets will rise again, but a $
star that falls is lost forever. Long con-
tinued cheering.] The plants in the gar q
den were not more numerous than the E
types of character, as expressed in ascot
icism ard luxury, cruelty and gentleness,
pride and humiliation, meditation and t
mlrth. Human nature that is many-sided 8
and myriad-minded human nature was G
stole and eplcurean, celibate and social. Il
brutal and gentle; austere and bacchana- u
lian, infidel and devout-all these charac- I
teristics existed in the human heart. The I
wise man seekingto develop the problem t
Of life, looking at ell these forces, would
undertake to deal healthfuIly with all, ab- 4
normally with none. Pleasure was to be
sought and despised, pain to be Stunned {
and to be endured, and in the midst of ali f
these contrarieties, he asked, did it ever 3
occur to them what basis had good char {
acter in the opinion of men, and how vir- ]
tuous virtue must he to be cardinal. Pro-
ceeding to illustrate, he said, the fortitude ,
which enabled Scaevola and Cramcr to !
plunge their hands into the fire was natu- 4
raj; it had no reference for religion, the ,
one being pagan, the other Christian,
Fortitude was capacity inherent in hu.
man nature, and he asked was there any /
carnation::of shame which rebuked grum- ,
bling at toothache or headache and
dared to murmur at heartache. TAp- ,
plause Men say the spirit is willing but ,
the flesh is weak !; that was a slander I
on human nature. Fortitude bore pain !
courage braved peril, and which OF these q
types was the more precious? Gibbon ,