120 
A. H. CHAMPLIN. 
The veterinary doctor of to-day has an advantage in not 
having to encounter so much superstition begotton of ignor¬ 
ance. 
You gentlemen are assembled here to-day to celebrate 
your graduation from the college to a school of broader 
activities. The diplomas you receive are simply hints of an 
unfinished race in which you are entered. They are not 
guarantees of success. Their value depends upon the amount 
of stimulus they bring to your powers in the contest in a 
larger arena of usefulness. 
All systems of medicine and surgery should tend to be 
corrective and. seek to prevent the propagation and perpetua¬ 
tion ol diseased conditions, which conditions mostl} 7 result 
from the products of vital forms, and which we conveniently 
call parasitical, bacterial, and infusorial. The field of oppor¬ 
tunity veterinary medicine and surgery presents is broad and 
inviting, and contains many experimental hints for rational 
medicine and surgery as related not only to the study of 
brute life, but the study of mankind. After all said, the prop¬ 
er study of man is the world in which he lives and moves 
and has his being. Were we to know the whole truth we 
would find there are no disconnecting links in the minerah 
vegetable, animal and man kingdoms. All forms of life are 
cast in divine moulds. Man is potentially greater only as a 
sequent resulting from the productions and modifications of 
the same vital principle involving and evolving all forms, all 
genera, and all species, including the embodiments of human 
traits and characteristics, a ceaseless impulse without begin¬ 
ning and without ending. Nor is it to man’s discredit that he 
be a regenerate ape ; for this fact bespeaks his further regen¬ 
eration. Human thought and human intelligence in the 
stricter sense are no more marvelous than the scent of a dog, 
and the sagacity of a horse. The finest model of man’s arch¬ 
itecture is no more wonderful than the home of the ant, and 
the cloistered cell of a bee-hive. The most intricate piece of 
fabric from the weaver’s loom finds its counterpart in the 
spider’s web. The conceptions and songs of the poets are no 
sweeter than the roundelays of the mating birds hinting at 
