VI.] ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 139 



choose to maintain that a fossil oyster shell, in spite of 

 its correspondence, down to every minutest particular, 

 with that of an oyster fresh taken out of the sea, was 

 never tenanted by a living oyster, but is a mineral 

 concretion, there is no demonstrating his error. All 

 that can be done is to show him that, by a parity of 

 reasoning, he is bound to admit that a heap of oyster 

 shells outside a fishmonger's door may also be " sports 

 of nature," and that a mutton bone in a dust-bin may 

 have had the like origin. And when you cannot prove 

 that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, 

 the best course is to let them alone. 



The whole fabric of palaeontology, in fact, falls to 

 the ground unless we admit the validity of Zadig's 

 great principle, that like effects imply like causes ; and 

 that the process of reasoning from a shell, or a tooth, 

 or a bone, to the nature of the animal to which it 

 belonged, rests absolutely on the assumption that the 

 likeness of this shell, or tooth, or bone, to that of some 

 animal with which we are already acquainted, is such 

 that we are justified in inferring a corresponding 

 degree of likeness in the rest of the two organisms. 

 It is on this very simple principle, and not upon 

 imaginary laws of physiological correlation, about 

 which, in most cases, we know nothing whatever, that 

 the so-called restorations of the palaeontologist are 

 based. 



Abundant illustrations of this truth will occur to 

 every one who is familiar with palaeontology ; none is 

 more suitable than the case of the so-called Belemnites. 

 In the early days of the study of fossils, this name was 



