VI.] ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 143 



present world, and the deposition, at the bottom of 

 the ocean, of the rocks which form the greater part of 

 the soil of our present continents. The Euphrates 

 itself, at the mouth of which Oannes landed, is a thing 

 of yesterday compared with a Belemnite ; and even 

 the liberal chronology of Magian cosmogony fixes the 

 beginning of the world only at a time when other 

 applications of Zadig's method afford convincing evi- 

 dence that, could we have been there to see, things 

 would have looked very much as they do now. Truly 

 the magi were wise in their generation ; they foresaw 

 rightly that this pestilent application of the principles 

 of common sense, inaugurated by Zadig, would be 

 their ruin. 



But it may be said that the method of Zadig, 

 which is simple reasoning from analogy, does not 

 account for the most striking feats of modern palaeon- 

 tology the reconstruction of entire animals from a 

 tooth or perhaps a fragment of a bone ; and it may be 

 justly urged that Cuvier, the great master of this kind 

 of investigation, gave a very different account of the 

 process which yielded such remarkable results. 



Cuvier is not the first man of ability who has failed 

 to make his own mental processes clear to himself, 

 and he will not be the last. The matter can be easily 

 tested. Search the eight volumes of the "Recherches 

 sur les Ossemens fossiles" from cover to cover, and 

 nothing but the application of the method of Zadig 

 will be found in the arguments by which a fragment 

 of a skeleton is made to reveal the characters of the 

 animal to which it belonged. 



