saw
newly fallen leaves; so I knew that 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 subtle discernment;
and the fame of it reached even the King and the Queen. From the
ante-rooms to the presence-chamber, Zadig's name was in
everybody's mouth; and, although many of the magi were of
opinion that he ought to be burnt 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
methods 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 applies as much
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 such
things were to