A third condition is that the type of imagination must be persistent through fairly long periods of time,…
- Date of account
- Traditional material presented in a work published 1922
- Source
- Myths and Legends of China
- Reference
- Myths and Legends of China · selected passage 14
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English synthesis of Chinese traditions
- Translation
- E. T. C. Werner
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
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 m…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyA 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.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis is a passage from a historical religious or interpretive text. Its genre, manuscript history, translation and place within its own tradition are part of the evidence and must remain visible.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice can compare the passage's descriptive features with later reports, but resemblance does not turn a vision, angel, mythic creature or sacred narrative into a modern incident report.
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