What we should expect, then, to find from our philosophical study of the Chinese mind as affected by its…
- 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 16
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English synthesis of Chinese traditions
- Translation
- E. T. C. Werner
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
What we should expect, then, to find from our philosophical study of the Chinese mind as affected by its surroundings would be barrenness of constructive imagination, except when birth was given to myth through the operation of some external agency
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 onlyWhat we should expect, then, to find from our philosophical study of the Chinese mind as affected by its surroundings would be barrenness of constructive imagination, except when birth was given to myth through the operation of some external agency. And this we do find. The period of the overthrow of the Yin dynasty and the establishment of the great house of Chou in 1122 B.C., or of the Wars of the Three States, for example, in the third century after Christ, a time of terrible anarchy, a medieval age of epic heroism, sung in a hundred forms of prose and verse, which has entered as motive into a dozen dramas, or the advent of Buddhism, which opened up a new world of thought and life to the simple, sober, peace-loving agricultural folk of China, were stimuli not by any means devoid of result. In China there are gods many and heroes many, and the very fact of the existence of so great a multitude of gods would logically imply a wealth of mythological lore inseparable from their apotheosis. You cannot--and the Chinese cannot--get behind reason.
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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