O.Y THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 471 



ceive endless minute differences where untrained eyes discern nothing ; 

 and because the unconscious logic of common sense compels them to 

 account for these effects by the causes which they know to be compe- 

 tent to produce them. 



And such mere methodized savagery was to discover the hidden 

 things of nature better than a priori deductions from the nature of 

 Ormuzd perhaps to give a history of the past, in which Oannes would 

 be altogether ignored ! Decidedly it were better to burn this man at 

 once. 



If instinct, or an unwonted use of reason, led Moabdar's magi to 

 this conclusion two or three thousand years ago, all that can be said 

 is that subsequent history has fully justified them. For the rigorous 

 application of Zadig's logic to the results of accurate and long-con- 

 tinued observation has founded all those sciences which have been 

 termed historical or paloetiological, because they are retrospectively 

 prophetic and strive toward the reconstruction in human imagination 

 of events which have vanished and ceased to be. 



History, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, is based upon the 

 interpretation of documentary evidence ; and documents would have 

 no evidential value unless historians were justified in their assumption 

 that they have come into existence by the operation of causes similar 

 to those of which documents are, in our present experience, the effects. 

 If a written history can be produced otherwise than by human agency, 

 or if the man who wrote a given document was actuated by other 

 than ordinary human motives, such documents are of no more eviden- 

 tial value than so many arabesques. 



Archaeology, which takes up the thread of history beyond the 

 point at which documentary evidence fails us, could have no existence, 

 except for our well-grounded confidence that monuments and works 

 of art, or artifice, have never been produced by causes different in kind 

 from those to which they now owe their origin. And geology, which 

 traces back the course of history beyond the limits of archeology 

 could tell us nothing except for the assumption that, millions of years 

 ago, water, heat, gravitation, friction, animal and vegetable life, caused 

 effects of the same kind as they do now. Nay, even physical astron- 

 omy, in so far as it takes us back to the uttermost point of time which 

 paketiological science can reach, is founded upon the same assump- 

 tion. If the law of gravitation ever failed to be true, even to the small- 

 est extent, for that period, the calculations of the astronomer have no 

 application. 



The power of prediction, of prospective prophecy, is that which is 

 commonly regarded as the great prerogative of physical science. And 

 truly it is a wonderful fact that one can go into a shop and buy for 

 small price a book, the "Nautical Almanac," which will foretell the 

 exact position to be occupied by one of Jupiter's moons six months 

 hence ; nay, more, that, if it were worth while, the Astronomer Royal 



