thology, 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