The sobriety and accuracy of Chinese historians is proverbial.  I have dilated upon this in another work, and need add here only what I inadvertently omitted there—­a point hitherto unnoticed or at least unremarked—­that the very word for history in Chinese (shih) means impartiality or an impartial annalist.  It has been said that where there is much myth there is little history, and vice versa, and though this may not be universally true, undoubtedly the persistently truthful recording of facts, events, and sayings, even at the risk of loss, yea, and actual loss of life of the historian as the result of his refusal to make false entries in his chronicle at the bidding of the emperor (as in the case of the historiographers of Ch’i in 547 B.C.), indicates a type of mind which would require some very strong stimulus to cause it to soar very far into the hazy realms of fanciful imagination.

Chinese Rigidity

A further cause, already hinted at above, for the arrest of intellectual progress is to be found in the growth of the nation in size during many centuries of isolation from the main stream of world-civilization, without that increase in heterogeneity which comes from the moulding by forces external to itself.  “As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”  Consequently we find China what is known to sociology as an ‘aggregate of the first order,’ which during its evolution has parted with its internal life-heat without absorbing enough from external sources to enable it to retain the plastic condition necessary to further, or at least rapid, development.  It is in a state of rigidity, a state recognized and understood by the sociologist in his study of the evolution of nations.

The Prerequisites to Myth

But the mere increase of constructive imagination is not sufficient to produce myth.  If it were, it would be reasonable to argue that as intellectual progress goes on myths become more numerous, and the greater the progress the greater the number of myths.  This we do not find.  In fact, if constructive imagination went on increasing without the intervention of any further factor, there need not necessarily be any myth at all.  We might almost say that the reverse is the case.  We connect myth with primitive folk, not with the greatest philosophers or the most advanced nations—­not, that is, with the most advanced stages of national progress wherein constructive imagination makes the nation great and strong.  In these stages the philosopher studies or criticizes myth, he does not make it.