134 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. [LECT. 



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 pro- 

 fessed 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 pre-existence 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 in- 

 conceivable premisses, such as delights the magian 

 heart. In fact, Zadig's method was nothing but the 

 method of all mankind. Ketrospective 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 



