Burlington free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1827-1865, 1848-11-10
From the VT State Agriculturist
PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

In this article propose to speak of the habit
OF obedience to Just authority.
True freedom is liable To be mistaken for
lawessness and license: indeed. those who
boast the most of freedom are oftcnest those
who know the least about it. Freedom does
not allow us to do every thing at our own will,
it allows only the liberty to do what is right,
and there is the most perfect freedom where
every man can Use all his powers of body and
mind III obedience to his sense of duty. We
have no right to do wrong. A man has the
physical power 10 steal. and if he has n will to
steal he can steal. but he has no right TO steal.
man has no right to take the life of another.
The united voice of bis own moral feeling and
the moral feeling of all men and of all times
says TO him. in the form of law, If thou steal,
thou shalt be punished if thou takcst away
the life of thy brother man. thine own shall be
required rs penalty. If habit of obedience
in accordance with this idea of right and free
dom were universal, 1t would supersedc the
necessity of written law {: but there would be
none the less of law, for all would obey law
more exact and more imperative than could be
produced by human enactment, and that too
without sense Of constraint. The obedient
citizen never thinks Of the law of the land as
constraning his ordinary action The iorna-
ton OF such habi, of obedience should com
mence at home, under the eye of the parent,
with the first dawn of the moral life, and there
be cherished in all possible ways, among which
the school-room must ever hold an important
place. If neglected there, all efforts elsewhere
will be of little avail, since nowhere else but
at home are SO many and so constant influences
brought to bear upon the character of the
child.
Transgression of moral principle usually COM
mcnces with dlsobcdience to parents or teach
ers. All Just laws, all just requirements, as
they spring from a common ground, SO they are
indissolubly connected. The child that dis
obeys with impunity the requirements of the
parent or teacher, is preparing to disobcy the
laws Of the land, and the laws of his Maker.
How many ruined men have traced back their
course to some first act of disobcdience, left
uncorrected, unrepented, till it has affected the
whole character, and evil has become their
chosen way.
The regulations Of the household or school
room should be right regulations not merely
arbitrary, dictated by the caprice of the mo-
mcnt, nor as regarding children as creatures of
intellect only, but possessing intellect and feel
ing; snch as shall commend themselves to tho
good sense of all, and enforced from a sense of
duty to all.
lapprehcnd there is far less danger of hay-
ing toe much government than of having too
little. There may be too many rules; these
should rather be few and comprehensive, Many
rules do not make up government. The stern
mandates Of the Russian Autocrat do not make
up a true government. In accordance with the
principles Just expressed it is not easy to have
too much government, too much cheerful ODE
dience to right authority. We ought to be
wholly obedient to the law Of duty, and the
nearer we become SO, the better and happier
4 %, IL, -.
the consequences take care of themselves. The
obedient scholar never feels the severity of
right school regulations lie never thinks of
them, never takes the trouble to know them.
The results of early formed habits of obedi-
ence, or the contrary, are manifested in the
after life of the individual in two forms, as
bearing upon the community of which he forms
part and upon his own self culture. All the
influences that relate to the growth of the ind-
vidual mind, or OF society, may be divided into
two classes, according to their prevalent type,
good or evil, The one Is the constructive ele-
ment, the other the destructive. They stand
together, side by side, the iron beside the clay,
in all human institutions, in all human work, be
it the formation of society, or the culture of the
individual mind. The one is the element of
life, growth and power the other of weakness,
decay and ruin. We speak of the laws of at.
traction, of the laws of nature, which govern
the growth of the plant, the tree, the unfolding
Of flower: Just fixed and determinate are
the laws which govern the growth Of mind in
dvIdual or collective. Society can in one
sense be said to have an existence apart from
the individuals that compose it at a given time
They are but the timbers that compose the edi-
flee, and are thus parts, not the ehole. They
may be changed, while the whole continues
Yet the whole depends for its vitality on the
parts; if they are diseased the whole will be
diseased also. Who has not observed what a
plague spot, even one vicious man can be in a
community: And what has made him the
source of so much mischief; What but hi.
own unregulatcd desires, his own ungoverned
passions lie did not govern them when they
were weak, and now they govern him. VIVA,
If community be made up of such men:
But we must pass to the consideration Of
consequences, more Immediately bearing upor
our practical life, deeply interesting, almost
fearful to every thoughtful mind, the results o,
habits of obedience upan our own self culture
BY right self culture is meant the government
of all those powers of body and of mind which
, make up our Individual existence, and which
I are emPhatcaly placed in our own keeping