The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Method of Zadig, by Thomas Henry Huxley

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Title: On the Method of Zadig
Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Author: Thomas Henry Huxley

Posting Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2627]
Release Date: May, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG

ESSAY #1 FROM "SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION"

By Thomas Henry Huxley

RETROSPECTIVE PROPHECY AS A FUNCTION OF SCIENCE

"Une marque plus sure que toutes celles de Zadig." [1]--Cuvier.

It is an usual and a commendable practice to preface the discussion of
the views of a philosophic thinker by some account of the man and of the
circumstances which shaped his life and coloured his way of looking at
things; but, though Zadig is cited in one of the most important chapters
of Cuvier's greatest work, little is known about him, and that little
might perhaps be better authenticated than it is.

It is said that he lived at Babylon in the time of King Moabdar; but
the name of Moabdar does not appear in the list of Babylonian sovereigns
brought to light by the patience and the industry of the decipherers of
cuneiform inscriptions in these later years; nor indeed am I aware
that there is any other authority for his existence than that of
the biographer of Zadig, one Arouet de Voltaire, among whose more
conspicuous merits strict historical accuracy is perhaps hardly to be
reckoned.

Happily Zadig is in the position of a great many other philosophers.
What he was like when he was in the flesh, indeed whether he existed at
all, are matters of no great consequence. What we care about in a light
is that it shows the way, not whether it is lamp or candle, tallow or
wax. Our only real interest in Zadig lies in the conceptions of which he
is the putative father; and his biographer has stated these with so much
clearness and vivacious illustration, that we need hardly feel a pang,
even if critical research should prove King Moabdar and all the rest of
the story to be unhistorical, and reduce Zadig himself to the shadowy
conditi