ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 



canons of magian lore ; and, trusting to what after all 

 was mere carnal common sense, he professed to lead 

 men to a deeper insight into nature than magian wis- 

 dom, with all its lofty antagonism to everything com- 

 mon, had ever reached. What, in fact, lay at the 

 foundation of all Zadig's arguments but the coarse com- 

 monplace assumption, upon which every act of our 

 daily lives is based, that we may conclude from an ef- 

 fect to the pre-existence of a cause competent to pro- 

 duce that effect? 



The tracks were exactly like those which dogs and 

 horses leave; therefore they were the effects of such 

 animals as causes. The marka 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. Noth- 

 ing can be more hopelessly vulgar, more unlike the ma- 

 jestic development of a system of grandly unintelligible 

 conclusions from sublimely inconceivable premisses, such 

 as delights the magian heart. In fact, Zadig's method 

 was nothing but the method of all mankind. Retro- 

 spective prophecies, far more astonishing for their mi- 

 nute accuracy than those of Zadig, are familiar to those 

 who have watched the daily life of nomadic people. 



From freshly broken twigs, crushed leaves, disturbed 

 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, 



