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 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.

There is one well-known case which may represent all. It is an
excellent illustration of Cuvier's sagacity, and he evidently
takes some pride in telling his story about it. A split slab of
stone arrived from the quarries of Montmartre, the two halves of
which contained the greater part of the skeleton of a small
animal. On careful examinations of the characters of the teeth
and of the lower jaw, which happened to be exposed, Cuvier
assured himself that they presented such a very close