It is not by loose, fanciful, and careless guess-work as to how the resemblance of Greek or Norse legends to those of the Red Indians is due to similar conditions of climate and life, that we shall arrive at facts; neither will the truth be ascertained by assuming that there was a certain beginning of them all in a certain country, or that they were all developed out of one mythology, be it solar or Shemitic, Hindoo or Hebrew. What we want is impartial examination--comparison and analysis. On this basis we find that all the Folk-lore or magic of Europe, and especially of its Eastern portion, has a great deal which is derived from black witchcraft, or from the succeeding Shamanism. When we find that a superstition is based on fertility, the "mystery of generation," or "Phallic worship"--as, for instance, wearing boars' teeth or a little pig for a charm--we may conclude that it is very ancient, but still not older than the time when wise men had begun to reflect on the mysteries of birth and death and weave them into myths. The exorcism of diseases as devils, and the belief that they, in common with other evils, may be drummed, or smoked, or incanted away into animals, trees, and streams, belongs in most cases to Shamanism. In all probability the oldest sorcery of all was entirely concerned with driving out devils and injuring enemies--just as most of the play of small boys runs to fighting or the semblance of it, or as the mutual relations of most animals in the lower stages consist of devouring one another. This was the very beginning of the beginnings, and it would be really marvellous that so much of it has survived were it not that to the one who is not quite dazzled or blinded by modern enlightenment there is still existent a great outer circle of human darkness, and that this darkness may be found in thousands of intermittent varying shadows or marvellous chiaroscuro, even in the brightest sun-pictures of modern life. As I write I have before me a copy of the Philadelphia Press, of April 14, 1889, in which a J. C. Batford, M.D., advertises that if any one will send him two two-cent postage stamps--i.e., twopence--"with a lock of your hair, name, age, and sex," he will send a clairvoyant diagnosis of your disease. This divining by the lock of hair is extremely ancient, and had its origin in the belief that he who could obtain one from an enemy could reach his soul and kill him. From communicating a disease by means of such a lock, and ascertaining what was the matter with a man, in the same manner, was a very obvious step forward.