Thus each "peculiarly Indian" idea supposed to be found in marchen proves to be practically universal. So the whole Indian hypothesis is attacked on every side. _Contes_ are far older than _historic_ India. Nothing raises even a presumption that they first arose in _prehistoric_ India. They are found in places where they could hardly have travelled from historic India. Their ideas are not peculiarly Indian, and though many reached Europe and Asia in literary form derived from India during the Middle Ages, and were even used as parables in sermons, yet the majority of European folk-tales have few traces of Indian influence. Some examples of this influence, as when the "frame-work" of an Oriental collection has acquired popular circulation, will be found in Professor Crane's interesting book, _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 168, 359. But to admit this is very different from asserting that German _Hausmarchen_ are all derived from "Indian and Arabian originals, with necessary changes of costume and manners," which is, apparently, the opinion of some students. What remains to do is to confess ignorance of the original centre of the _märchen_, and inability to decide dogmatically which stories must have been invented only once for all, and which may have come together by the mere blending of the universal elements of imagination. It is only certain that no limit can be put to a story's power of flight _per ora virum_. It may wander wherever merchants wander, wherever captives are dragged, wherever slaves are sold, wherever the custom of exogamy commands the choice of alien wives. Thus the story flits through the who let race and over the whole world. Wherever human communication is or has been possible, there the story may go, and the space of time during which the courses of the sea and the paths of the land have been open to story is dateless and unknown. Here the story may dwindle to a fireside tale; there it may become an epic in the mouth of Homer or a novel in the hands of Madame D'Aulnoy or Miss Thackeray. The savage makes the characters beasts or birds; the epic \ poet or saga-man made them heroic kings, or lovely, baleful sorceresses, daughters of the Sun; the French Countess makes them princesses and countesses. Like its own heroes, the popular story can assume every shape; like some of them, it has drunk the waters of immortality.* * A curious essay by Mr. H. E. Warner, on "The Magical Flight," urges that there is no plot, but only a fortuitous congeries of story-atoms (Scribner's Magazine, June, 1887). There is a good deal to be said, in this case, for Mr. Warner's conclusions. APPENDIX A. Fontenelle's forgotten common sense