470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



such things were to be seen. In all these cases it is only the relation 

 to time which alters the process of divination beyond the limits of 

 possible direct knowledge remains the same. 



No doubt it was their instinctive recognition of the analogy between 

 Zadig's results and those obtained by authorized inspiration which in- 

 spired the Babylonian magi with the desire to burn the philosopher. 

 Zadig admitted that he had never either seen or heard of the horse 

 of the king or of the spaniel of the queen ; and yet he ventured to 

 assert in the most positive manner that animals answering to their 

 description did actually exist, and ran about the plains of Babylon. 

 If his method was good for the divination of the course of events ten 

 hours old, why should it not be good for those of ten years or ten 

 centuries past ; nay, might it not extend to ten thousand years, and 

 justify the impious in meddling with the traditions of Oannes and the 

 fish, and all the sacred foundations of Babylonian cosmogony ? 



But this was not the worst. There was another consideration 

 which obviously dictated to the more thoughtful of the magi the pro- 

 priety of burning Zadig out of hand. His defense was worse than 

 his offense. It showed that his mode of divination was fraught with 

 danger to magianism in general. Swollen with the pride of human 

 reason, he had ignored the established canons of magian lore ; and, 

 trusting to what after all was mere carnal common sense, he professed 

 to lead men to a deeper insight into nature than magian wisdom, with 

 all its lofty antagonism to everything common, had ever reached. 

 What, in fact, lay at the foundation of all Zadig's arguments but the 

 coarse, commonplace assumption upon which every act of our daily 

 lives is based, that we may conclude from an effect to the preexistence 

 of a cause competent to produce that effect ? 



The tracks were exactly like those which dogs and horses leave ; 

 therefore they were the effects of such animals as causes. The marks 

 at the sides of the fore-prints of the dog-track were exactly such 

 as would be produced by long, trailing ears ; therefore the dog's long 

 ears were the causes of these marks and so on. Nothing can be 

 more hopelessly vulgar, more unlike the majestic development of a 

 system of grandly unintelligible conclusions from sublimely incon- 

 ceivable premises, such as delights the magian heart. In fact, Zadig's 

 method was nothing but the method of all mankind. Retrospective 

 prophecies, far more astonishing for their minute accuracy than those 

 of Zadig, are familiar to those who have watched the daily life of 

 nomadic people. 



From freshly broken twigs, crushed leaves, disturbed pebbles, and 

 imprints hardly discernible by the untrained eye, such graduates in 

 the University of Nature will divine, not only the fact that a party 

 has passed that way, but its strength, its composition, the course it 

 took, and the number of hours or days which have elapsed since it 

 passed. But they are able to do this because, like Zadig, they per- 



