COMPLETE LIVING
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.