number of little hills rather than a few great mountains, but the
little hills are very good ones after their kind; and the object of
this work is to present Chinese myth as it is, not as it might have
been had the universe been differently constituted. Nevertheless, if,
as we may rightly do, we judge of myth by the sentiments pervading
it and the ideals upheld and taught by it, we shall find that Chinese
myth must be ranked among the greatest.


Myth and Legend

The general principles considered above, while they explain the paucity
of myth in China, explain also the abundance of legend there. The six
hundred years during which the Mongols, Mings, and Manchus sat upon
the throne of China are barren of myth, but like all periods of the
Chinese national life are fertile in legend. And this chiefly for the
reason that myths are more general, national, divine, while legends are
more local, individual, human. And since, in China as elsewhere, the
lower classes are as a rule less educated and more superstitious than
the upper classes--have a certain amount of constructive imagination,
but not enough to be self-critical--legends, rejected or even ridiculed
by the scholarly class when their knowledge has become sufficiently
scientific, continue to be invented and believed in by the peasant and
the dweller in districts far from the madding crowd long after myth,
properly so called, has exhaled its last breath.



CHAPTER III