OBEDIENCE, or submission to authority, is one of the first and most important of all things in education; and unless the child is taught, when young, to curb its desires, and to yield its will to that of another, it will be much more difficult, if not impossible, for it to submit to lawful authority, to reason and conscience, when it is older. He who has never been taught to submit to authority, who has never been trained to obey another, can be but little able to obey himself, to yield the lower to the higher principles of his nature, to exercise self-command and self-control. It is not by self-will or self-assertion, or any form of self-development—development from within,—that any one has ever become great, but only by being a humble and submissive learner at the feet of others and in the great school of the world. Further, it is a leading principle of our nature that our powers are called forth by opposition, our faculties developed by antagonism; and hence, when the motive powers within are deprived of those checks and restraints from without that serve to regulate and to strengthen them, they become weak and languid, or act irregularly, and the individual becomes dull and stupid, or impulsive and passionate. When those who have been overindulged in childhood and early years come out into the world, they find that they can not get circumstances to bend to them as before; and as they have never learned how, when adverse they are to be met and overcome, they are at a loss how to deal with them, and are readily brought to a standstill by opposition, or to have recourse to unsuitable or unworthy means to overcome them. A man can never have the full power of his faculties unless he has them well under control, as there would be no force in steam if it were unrestrained and allowed to blow off spontaneously.— Selected.