propriety of burning Zadig out of hand. His defence was worse
than his offence. It showed that his mode of divination was
fraught with danger to magianism in general. Swollen with the
pride of human reason, he had ignored the established 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 wisdom, with all its lofty antagonism to
everything common, had ever reached. What, in fact, lay at the
foundation of all Zadig's argument but the coarse commonplace
assumption, upon which every act of our daily lives is based,
that we may conclude from an effect to the pre-existence of a
cause competent to produce that effect?

The tracks were exactly like those which dogs and horses leave;
therefore they were the effects of such animals as causes.
The marks 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. Nothing can be more hopelessly vulgar, more unlike
the majestic 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. Retrospective prophecies, far
more astonishing for their minute 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