150 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 



been found in any of the tertiary deposits, and they 

 appear to have died out towards the close of the inesozoic 

 epoch. The method of Zadig, therefore, applies in full 

 force to the events of a period which is immeasurably 

 remote, which long preceded the origin of the most 

 conspicuous mountain masses of the 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 

 Cannes 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 evidence 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 palaeontology the re- 

 construction 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 



