Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/244

 236 the power of the person into whose hands it is given. Thus in the Alcestis, Death draws his sword to cut off a tress of the hair of Alcestis,

And amongst modern Greeks at a christening, "three tiny locks of hair, if these can be found, are cut from the baby's head and thrown into the font, 'in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost'" (Miss Garnett, The Women of Turkey, p. 73). So, too, in folk-tales, a portion of the hero's apparel, etc., serves to inform him or her with whom it is left whether the hero is or is not still alive. May not the custom of preserving locks of hair in ockets, etc., have had its origin in some belief of this kind?

Be this as it may, in dealing with divination the important thing is to remember that in the definition of it as "supernatural communication" we have a theory embodied. That theory is one originated by the Stoics; and conformable as it may have been to the knowledge of the age in which it was formulated, it does not satisfy the requirements of scientific folk-lore. When some Mill of the future comes to write the "Principles of Savage Logic", it will be clear to all that many modes of divination and much magic are but methods of observation and experiment which in one age were, and in a subsequent age were not, considered valid by logicians. It will be also clear that there is not that absolute hiatus between savage and scientific logic which is generally assumed. On the contrary, the Law of Continuity holds here as elsewhere. The difference between the two logics is not, for instance, that the Methods of Agreement and Difference are known to the one and not known to the other; nor even that the savage imagines points of likeness or difference where they do not exist; but that savage and scientific man differ as to what points of similarity or dissimilarity