The daily gazette., 1876-01-01
The Problem Of Life.
TILTON'S LECTURE
AT THE OPERA HOUSE.

| Al IHF OfEkkA ttOLSEs.
| What the Problem of Life Ii and How
1t may be Solved.
The great success which has hitherto
attended Theodore Tiltons lecturing
tour met q perceptible check last night
when he appeared at our Grand Opera
House. The audience which greeted
him was not very large numbering be-
tween three and four hundred-but it
was very fair in numbers for Whining
ton lecture audience, and was really an
intelligent assemblage. But still it was
u considerable contrast to the overflow
ing houses which have hitherto greeted
MIR. Tilton during his last lecturing tour.
Dir. Tilton came upon the stage unan-
| nounced, about eight o'clock, and with
out introduction Immediately thereafter
opened his lecture.
The problem of life, of which he would
treat, he said, was not that which Hux-
ley, with his theories Of protoplasm vain
ly sought to solve, but was that one that
was as old as the ages, unsettled as the
sea, and yet ever vital as human nature.
For he supposed every man had had the
same fair share of human experience;
that is every man who had gone far
enough into life to 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-every
such man in the hurly -burly of everyday
life, asked himself what was the func-
tion, the mystery, the problem Of every
day life? Solomon. the wise, expressed
his opinion of it when he said, vanity
of vanities, all is vanity" and Job, the
patient man, said, Cursed be the day
on which l was born" He heard men
daily inveighing against the world, and
set he thought that as God, who made
it, called it good, it was unbecoming for
men, for whom He made it, to pronounce
it i'll. 1t was q rich and great and won
| derful world, created, after infinite cy-
cles Of years, for mans happiness and
love-. In poetic images he portrayed the
| wondrous richness of earth, with its
productions SO multitudinous that the
human mind had not the capacity to
grasp the catalogue. And out of this
bounty how small was each mans por-
tion! He would accord to man the at
tainment Of the highest ambitions of the
| created universe, ,hewould endowhimwith
all the possibilities fertile fancy could
suggest, and his possession, as compared
with existing things, was as the possess
sion Of the midget of stately forest.
Hence, while the world was great the
mans share was little; ambition was
| vanity, and the only chance was to sur
render it, and obtain instead the maste-
ry Of ones self. The problem Of life was
to find out the duty of life and fulfill it.
1t was not the attainment of wealth nor
power, nor fame, nor learning, bat was,
in his judgment, the development of
human character. Suppose it was the
attainment OF wealth, or power, or fame,
or greatness, how many men attain 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 apply
| to for it; and, although he did not think
| the market was glutted with it, immor-
tai 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.
A mans character was not only in his
| own keeping, but it was in his own max
ing. All! he said he meant character
and not reputation. A mans character
was what he was; mans reputation
was what people imagined him to be.
Character was one thing, reputation
far apart as the East and West-differ-
ent as day and night. Character and
reputation, Why the greatest charac-
ter in all history made himself Of no
reputation.
Human nature, that is many-sided and
myriad minded human nature was
stole and epicurean, celibate and social,
brutal and gentle, austere and bacchan-
allan, intidel and devout-all these char
acteristics existed in the human heart.
The wise man seeking to develop the
problem Of life, looking at all these
forces, would undertake to deal health
fully with all, s.bnormally with none. |
Pleasure was TO be sought and despised,
pain to be Stunned and to be endured, |
and in the midst of all these contrari- |
ties, he asked, did it ever occur to them |
what basis had good character in the |
opinion of men and how virtuous virtue |
must be to be cardinal? Proceeding to |
illustrate, he said the fortitude which |
enabled ScBvola and Cranmer to plunge
their hands into the fire was natural
it had no reference to religion, the one
being Pagan, the other Christian.
am told, learned gentleman, in speak
ing about st. Patrick, upset our old belief
that he was an Irishman, or a Scotch
man, or even an Englishman, BY proving
that he was Frenchman.
No man in the face of public opinion
would assert his fault If he doubted
the thirty nine articles, or deemed
failure, or trial by jury a
farce. Orestes Brownson said that
while kneeling in Catholic church
in Boston. He denounced the preva-
lence of falsehood in politics, COM
merce, the pulpit and in the ladys
and said that in this civilized
eineteenth century man forgave an
injury at the expense of his reputation
The seven wise men of Athens each
in his turn expressed his idea of a
perfect form of government in the
following manner; Where the injury
to one private citizen is treated as an
Injury to the whole community;
where the law has no superior; where
the people are neither rich nor poor;
where virtue is honored and vice con-
1emned; where office is conferred on
good men alone; where the people are
ruled by public opinion not by legal
and where the laws speak :
with more authority than The dama