not by the romance-writer in his peaceful study, that mythology, like literature, is “incisively determined.”  Imagination, we saw, goes pari passu with intellectual progress, and intellectual progress, in early times, is furthered not so much by the mere contact as by the actual conflict of nations.  And we see also that myths may, and very frequently do, have a character quite different from that of the nation to which they appertain, for environment plays a most important part both in their inception and subsequent growth—­a truth too obvious to need detailed elaboration.

Persistent Soul-expression

A third condition is that the type of imagination must be persistent through fairly long periods of time, otherwise not only will there be an absence of sufficient feeling or momentum to cause the myths to be repeated and kept alive and transmitted to posterity, but the inducement to add to them and so enable them to mature and become complete and finished off and sufficiently attractive to appeal to the human mind in spite of the foreign character they often bear will be lacking.  In other words, myths and legends grow.  They resemble not so much the narrative of the story-teller or novelist as a gradually developing art like music, or a body of ideas like philosophy.  They are human and natural, though they express the thought not of any one individual mind, but of the folk-soul, exemplifying in poetical form some great psychological or physiographical truth.

The Character of Chinese Myth

The nature of the case thus forbids us to expect to find the Chinese myths exhibiting the advanced state and brilliant heterogeneity of those which have become part of the world’s permanent literature.  We must expect them to be true to type and conditions, as we expect the other ideas of the Chinese to be, and looking for them in the light of this knowledge we shall find them just where we should expect to find them.

The great sagas and eddas exalted among the world’s literary masterpieces, and forming part of the very life of a large number of its inhabitants, are absent in China.  “The Chinese people,” says one well-known sinologist, “are not prone to mythological invention.”  “He who expects to find in Tibet,” says another writer, “the poetical charm of Greek or Germanic mythology will be disappointed.  There is a striking poverty of imagination in all the myths and legends.  A great monotony pervades them all.  Many of their stories, taken from the sacred texts, are quite puerile and insipid.  It may be noted that the Chinese mythology labours under the same defect.”  And then there comes the crushing judgment of an over-zealous Christian missionary sinologist:  “There is no hierarchy of gods brought in to rule and inhabit the world they made, no conclave on Mount Olympus, nor judgment of the mortal soul by Osiris, no transfer