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
fact that a party has passed that way, but its strength, its
composition, the course it took, and the number of hours or days
which have elapsed since it passed. But they are able to do this
because, like Zadig, they perceive endless minute differences
where untrained eyes discern nothing; and because the
unconscious logic of common sense compels them to account for
these effects by the causes which they know to be competent to
produce them.
And such mere methodised savagery was to discover the hidden
things of nature better than
a priori deductions from the
nature of Ormuzd--perhaps to give a history of the past, in
which Oannes would be altogether ignored! Decidedly it were
better to burn this man at once.
If instinct, or an unwonted use of reason, led Moabdar's magi to
this conclusion two or three thousand years ago, all that can be
said is that subsequent history has fully justified them.
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