life of imagination. A survey of the first was necessary for a complete
understanding of the second. The two react upon each other, affecting
the national character and through it the history of the world.

Mythology is the science of the unscientific man's explanation
of what we call the Otherworld--itself and its denizens, their
mysterious habits and surprising actions both there and here, usually
including the creation of this world also. By the Otherworld he does
not necessarily mean anything distant or even invisible, though the
things he explains would mostly be included by us under those terms. In
some countries myths are abundant, in others scarce. Why should this
be? Why should some peoples tell many and marvellous tales about their
gods and others say little about them, though they may say a great deal
to them? We recall the 'great' myths of Greece and Scandinavia. Other
races are 'poor' in myths. The difference is to be explained by the
mental characters of the peoples as moulded by their surroundings and
hereditary tendencies. The problem is of course a psychological one,
for it is, as already noted, in imagination that myths have their
root. Now imagination grows with each stage of intellectual progress,
for intellectual progress implies increasing representativeness of
thought. In the lower stages of human development imagination is feeble
and unproductive; in the highest stages it is strong and constructive.


The Chinese Intellect

The Chinese are not unimaginative, but their minds did not go on to the
construction of any myths which should be world-great and immortal;
and one reason why they did not construct such myths was that their
intellectual progress was arrested at a comparatively early stage. It