ble,
applicable to the courts, the church and science of Europe. As the
story runs on, midst many and sudden adventures, the Babylonian reads
causes from events in guileless fashion, enthusiastic as Sherlock
Holmes, and no less efficient--and all the while, behind this innocent
mask, Voltaire is insinuating a comparison between the practical
results of Zadig's common sense and the futile mental cobwebs spun by
the alleged thought of the time.

Especially did "Zadig" caricature orthodox science, and the metaphysicians,
whose solemn searches after final causes, after the reality behind the
appearance of things, mostly wandered into hopeless tangles, and thus
formed a great weapon of political oppression, by postponing the age
of reason and independent thought. Zadig "did not employ himself in
calculating how many inches of water flow in a second of time under the
arches of a bridge, or whether there fell a cube line of rain in the
month of the Mouse more than in the month of the Sheep. He never
dreamed of making silk of cobwebs, or porcelain of broken bottles; but
he chiefly studied the properties of plants and animals; and soon
acquired a sagacity that made him _discover a thousand differences
where other men see nothing but uniformity_."

FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE

_Zadig the Babylonian_

THE BLIND OF ONE EYE

There lived at Babylon, in the reign of King Moabdar, a young man named
Zadig, of a good natural disposition, strengthened and improved by
education. Though rich and young, he had learned to moderate his
passions; he had nothing stiff or affected in his behavior, he did not
pretend to examine every action by the strict rules of reason, but was
always ready to make proper allowances for the weakness of mankind.

It was matter of surprise that, notwithstanding his sprightly wit, he
never exposed by his raillery those vague, incoherent, and noisy
discourses, those rash censures, ignorant decisions, coarse jests, and
all that empty jingle of words which at Babylon went by the name of
conversation. He had learned, in the first book of Zoroaster, that self
love is a football swelled with wind, from which, when pierced, the
most terrible tempests issue forth.

Above all, Zadig never boasted of his conquests among the women, nor
affected to entertain a contemptible opinion of the fair sex. He was
generous, and was never afraid of obliging the ungrateful; remembering
the grand precept of Zoroaste