Complete Living

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Title:     Complete Living
Author: Francis B. Pearson [More Titles by Pearson]

In my quiet way I have been making inquiries among my acquaintances for a long time, trying to find out what education really is. As a schoolmaster I must try to make it appear that I know. In fact, I am quite a Sir Oracle on the subject of education in my school. But, in the quiet of my den, after the day's work is done, I often long for some one to come in and tell me just what it is. I am fairly conversant with the multiplication table and can distinguish between active and passive verbs, but even with these attainments I somehow feel that I have not gone to the extreme limits of the meaning of education. In reality, I don't know what it is or what it is for. I do wish that the man who says in his book that education is a preparation for complete living would come into this room right now, sit down in that chair, and tell me, man to man, what complete living is. I want to know and think I have a right to know. Besides, he has no right to withhold this information from me. He had no right to get me all stirred up with his definition, and then go away and leave me dangling in the air. If he were here I'd ask him a few pointed questions. I'd ask him to tell me just how the fact that seven times nine is sixty-three is connected up with complete living. I'd want him to explain, too, what the binomial theorem has to do with complete living, and also the dative of reference. I got the notion, when I was struggling with that binomial theorem, that it would ultimately lead on to fame or fortune; but it hasn't done either, so far as I can make out.

There was a time when I could solve an equation of three unknown quantities, and could even jimmy a quantity out from under a radical sign, and had the feeling that I was quite a fellow. Then one day I went into a bookstore to buy a book. I had quite enough money to pay for one, and had somehow got the notion that a boy of my attainments ought to have a book. But, in the presence of the blond chap behind the counter, I was quite abashed, for I did not in the least know what book I wanted. I knew it wasn't a Bible, for we had one at home, but further than that I could not go. Now, if knowing how to buy a book is a part of complete living, then, in that blond presence, I was hopelessly adrift. I had been taught that gambling is wrong, but there was a situation where I had to take a chance or show the white feather. Of course, I took the chance and was relieved of my money by a blond who may or may not have been able to solve radicals. I shall not give the title of the book I drew in that lottery, for this is neither the time nor the place for confessions.

I was a book-agent for one summer, but am trying to live it down. Hoping to sell a copy of the book whose glowing description I had memorized, I called at the home of a wealthy farmer. The house was spacious and embowered in beautiful trees and shrubbery. There was a noble driveway that led up from the country road, and everything betokened great prosperity. Once inside the house, I took a survey of the fittings and could see at once that the farmer had lavished money upon the home to make it distinctive in the neighborhood as a suitable background for his wife and daughters. The piano alone must have cost a small fortune, and it was but one of the many instruments to be seen. There were carpets, rugs, and curtains in great profusion, and a bewildering array of all sorts of bric-a-brac. In time the father asked one of the daughters to play, and she responded with rather unbecoming alacrity. What she played I shall never know, but it seemed to me to be a five-finger exercise. Whatever it was, it was not music. I lost interest at once and so had time to make a more critical inspection of the decorations. What I saw was a battle royal. There was the utmost lack of harmony. The rugs fought the carpets, and both were at the throats of the curtains. Then the wall-paper joined in the fray, and the din and confusion was torture to the spirit. Even the furniture caught the spirit of discord and made fierce attacks upon everything else in the room. The reds, and yellows, and blues, and greens whirled and swirled about in such a dizzy and belligerent fashion that I wondered how the people ever managed to escape nervous prostration. But the daughter went right on with the five-finger exercise as if nothing else were happening. I shall certainly cite this case when the man comes in to explain what he means by complete living.

This all reminds me of the man of wealth who thought it incumbent upon him to give his neighbors some benefit of his money in the way of pleasure. So he went to Europe and bought a great quantity of marble statuary and had the pieces placed in the spacious grounds about his home. When the opening day came there ensued much suppressed tittering and, now and then, an uncontrollable guffaw. Diana, Venus, Vulcan, Apollo, Jove, and Mercury had evidently stumbled into a convention of nymphs, satyrs, fairies, sprites, furies, harpies, gargoyles, giants, pygmies, muses, and fates. The result was bedlam. Parenthetically, I have often wondered how much money it cost that man to make the discovery that he was not a connoisseur of art, and also what process of education might have fitted him for a wise expenditure of all that money.

So I go on wondering what education is, and nobody seems quite willing to tell me. I bought some wall-paper once, and when it had been hung there was so much laughter at my taste, or lack of it, that, in my chagrin, I selected another pattern to cover up the evidence of my ignorance. But that is expensive, and a schoolmaster can ill afford such luxurious ignorance. People were unkind enough to say that the bare wall would have been preferable to my first selection of paper, I was made conscious that complete living was impossible so long as that paper was visible. But even when the original had been covered up I looked at the wall suspiciously to see whether it would show through as a sort of subdued accusation against me. I don't pretend to know whether taste in the selection of wall-paper is inherent or acquired. If it can be acquired, then I wonder, again, just how cube root helps it along.

I don't know what education is, but I do know that it is expensive. I had some pictures in my den that seemed well enough till I came to look at some others, and then they seemed cheap and inadequate. I tried to argue myself out of this feeling, but did not succeed. As a result, the old pictures have been supplanted by new ones, and I am poorer in consequence. But, in spite of my depleted purse, I take much pleasure in my new possessions and feel that they are indications of progress. I wonder, though, how long it will be till I shall want still other and better ones. Education may be a good thing, but it does increase and multiply one's wants. Then, in a brief time, these wants become needs, and there you have perpetual motion. When the agent came to me first to try to get me interested in an encyclopaedia I could scarce refrain from smiling. But later on I began to want an encyclopaedia, and now the one I have ranks as a household necessity the same as bathtub, coffee-pot, and tooth-brush.

But, try as I may, I can't clearly distinguish between wants and needs. I see a thing that I want, and the very next day I begin to wonder how I can possibly get on without it. This must surely be the psychology of show-windows and show-cases. If I didn't see the article I should feel no want of it, of course. But as soon as I see it I begin to want it, and then I think I need it. The county fair is a great psychological institution, because it causes people to want things and then to think they need them. The worst of it is the less able I am to buy a thing the more I want it and seem to need it. I'd like to have money enough to make an experiment on myself just to see if I could ever reach the point, as did the Caliph, where the only want I'd have would be a want. Possibly, that's what the man means by complete living. I wonder.

[The end]
Francis B. Pearson's essay: Complete Living

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