Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/485

Rh puppies not many days since. Other scrapings of the sand, which always lay close to the marks of the fore-paws, indicated that she had very long ears; and, as the imprint of one foot was always fainter than those of the other three, I judged that the lady dog of our august queen was, if I may venture to say so, a little lame.

"With respect to the horse of the King of kings, permit me to observe that, wandering through the paths which traverse the wood, I noticed the marks of horseshoes. They were all equidistant. 'Ah!' said I, 'this is a famous galloper.' In a narrow alley, only seven feet wide, the dust upon the trunks of the trees was a little disturbed at three feet and a half from the middle of the path. 'This horse,' said I to myself, 'had a tail three feet and a half long, and, lashing it from one side to the other, he has swept away the dust.' Branches of trees met overhead at the height of five feet, and under them I saw newly fallen leaves; so I knew the horse had brushed some of the branches and was therefore five feet high. As to his bit, it must have been made of twenty-three carat gold, for he had rubbed it against a stone, which turned out to be a touchstone, with the properties of which I am familiar by experiment. Lastly, by the marks which his shoes left upon pebbles of another kind, I was led to think that his shoes were of fine silver."

All the judges admired Zadig's profound and subtile discernment; and the fame of it reached even the king and the queen. From the anterooms to the presence-chamber, Zadig's name was in everybody's mouth; and, although many of the magi were of the opinion that he ought to be burned as a sorcerer, the king commanded that the four hundred ounces of gold which he had been fined should be restored to him. So the officers of the court went in state with the four hundred ounces; only they retained three hundred and ninety-eight for legal expenses, and their servants expected fees.

Those who are interested in learning more of the fateful history of Zadig must turn to the original; we are dealing with him only as a philosopher, and this brief excerpt suffices for the exemplification of the nature of his conclusions and of the method by which he arrived at them.

These conclusions may be said to be of the nature of retrospective prophecies; though it is perhaps a little hazardous to employ phraseology which perilously suggests a contradiction in terms—the word "prophecy" being so constantly, in ordinary use, restricted to "foretelling." Strictly, however, the term prophecy as much applies to outspeaking as to foretelling; and, even in the restricted sense of "divination," it is obvious that the essence of the prophetic operation does not lie in its backward or forward relation to the course of time, but in the fact that it is the apprehension of that which lies out of the sphere of immediate knowledge; the seeing of that which to the natural sense of the seer is invisible.

The foreteller asserts that, at some future time, a properly situated observer will witness certain events; the clairvoyant declares that, at this present time, certain things are to be witnessed a thousand miles away; the retrospective prophet (would that there were such a word as "backteller"!) affirms that, so many hours or years ago, such and