We have a few words to say relative to this reflection. Now, we solemnly believe, and are prepared to argue, that a collegiate education would have materially detracted from his _usefulness_. A scholastic or classic course of study seems to unfit men in a great degree for active life. The practical too often becomes merged in the ideal, and the mind grows effeminate. A theoretical knowledge of human nature is imbibed, and we are led to contemplate our fellow-men through a false medium; for essayists write of men as they should be, but rarely as they are. Mr. Ballou was acknowledged by all who knew him, to possess a remarkable degree of knowledge concerning human nature, but it was gathered from men, not books, from experience,--Time's free school,--not from theory. No other kind of knowledge would have fitted him for the peculiar path he was born to pursue. A pioneer should be what he was; a follower, the roads once cleared, and the track made smooth, might, perhaps, without danger, be less practical and more imaginative. Education, to be truly useful, should be unequalled in its ability to instruct us in the things about us, and to strengthen us for the duties that lie in our path of life. The true being, end, and aim of all study should be, "to improve men in the best reason of living," while any learning that aims above the practical interests of life is comparatively unimportant. Even in the ministry, "Church ladders are not always mounted best By learned clerks and Latinists professed." "That learning which makes us acquainted with ourselves," says Mr. Ballou, "with the powers and faculties of the human mind, with divine truth, which is plainly revealed, with its power on the mind and heart, with the concatenations of cause and effect, and to understand our every-day duty, which grows out of our wants and the wants of those about us, is learning of a better quality than that which only enables us to call things by different names, without giving us a knowledge of their natural qualities either for good or evil." The main characteristic of Mr. Ballou's habit of mind was that of looking at all things in a practical point of view. The importance and real value he attached to things were deduced from his estimate of their _use_. He regarded life as made up of constantly recurring duties, and his appreciation of principles, of religion or philosophy, was carefully regulated by this standard, as to the application they bore to every-day matters. The great end of all acquirements should be the ability to discharge more effectually our duties as men and citizens. "He who is not a better neighbor, brother, friend, and citizen," says an eminent writer, "because of his superior knowledge, may very well doubt whether his knowledge is really superior to the ignorance of the unlettered many around him." Or, to state this great truth more in brief, a man knows no more to any purpose than he practises. CHAPTER IX.