116 
A. H. OHAMPLIN. 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
HINTS, 
By A. H. Champlin. 
(Address delivered at Commencement Exercises of Chicago Veterinary College). 
Nature always speaks in hints. She never tells the whole 
of her story. This is true whether we accept her teachings 
as divine expressions and revelations of a Supreme intelligence 
and will power, or as manifestations of a ceaseless activity 
evolved from circumstance and chance, which are really other 
terms for designating law and condition. 
In the evolution of her problems facts become fiction, and 
fictions, facts. Conjecture is the parent of both joy and de¬ 
spair. 
Adhesion is the universal law of love. The crystal whose 
atoms are held in embrace by the force of cohesion typifies 
the cosmic structure of the universe ; but the reflections of 
love from the diamond are as perplexing and tantalizing as 
they are dazzling. They illumine the eye, and, for the 
moment, fill the soul with ecstasy; but all efforts to grasp 
them are as futile as the strivings of the swallows to catch 
the dancing sunbeams on the waters. So, too, apprehension 
of universal truth must always fall short of comprehension. 
The unfolding of the leaf for light and sustenance, the cir¬ 
culation of sap through the stems of the tree, the search of the 
roots for moisture in the soil, in short, all functional activity 
in the vegetable kingdom prefigure the tendency toward pro¬ 
cesses of nutrition and secretion manifested in the protoplasm 
and all other types and classifications of animal life; but the 
primordial impulse never offers us anything more than a sug¬ 
gestion of the law of similitudes. 
The perfume of the crushed flower at our feet, the shrink¬ 
ing of the mimosa, the vibrations of color and heat, the cling¬ 
ing of the jelly fish to a rock, hint at the unfolding of a sense; 
but no one can tell where consciousness begins or where con¬ 
sciousness ends. 
