spiked chariots, battering-rams, and hurling-engines to mangonels,
trebuchets, matchlocks of wrought iron and plain bore with long
barrels resting on a stock, and gingals fourteen feet long resting on
a tripod, cuirasses of quilted cotton cloth covered with brass knobs,
and helmets of iron or polished steel, sometimes inlaid, with neck-
and ear-lappets. And they have been content not to improve upon these
to any appreciable extent; but have lately shown a tendency to make
the later patterns imported from the West in their own factories.

They have produced one of the greatest and most remarkable
accumulations of literature the world has ever seen, and the finest
porcelain; some music, not very fine; and some magnificent painting,
though hardly any sculpture, and little architecture that will live.



CHAPTER II

On Chinese Mythology


Mythology and Intellectual Progress

The Manichæst, _yin-yang_ (dualist), idea of existence, to which
further reference will be made in the next chapter, finds its
illustration in the dual life, real and imaginary, of all the
peoples of the earth. They have both real histories and mythological
histories. In the preceding chapter I have dealt briefly with the
first--the life of reality--in China from the earliest times to the
present day; the succeeding chapters are concerned with the second--the