8 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG I 



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 devel- 

 opment of a system of grandly unintelligible con- 

 clusions from sublimely inconceivable premisses 

 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, dis- 

 turbed 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 perceive endless minute differences where un- 

 trained eyes discern nothing ; and because the un- 

 conscious logic of common sense compels them to 

 account for these effects by the causes which 

 they know to be competent to produce them. 



And such mere methodised savagery was to dis- 

 cover the hidden things of nature better than a 

 priori deductions from the nature of Ormuzd 



