Applying the general principles stated in the preceding chapter, we find the same cause which operated to restrict the growth of mythology in general in China operated also in like manner in this particular branch of it.  With one exception Chinese cosmogony is non-mythological.  The careful and studiously accurate historians (whose work aimed at being ex veritate, ’made of truth’), the sober literature, the vast influence of agnostic, matter-of-fact Confucianism, supported by the heavy Mencian artillery, are indisputable indications of a constructive imagination which grew too quickly and became too rapidly scientific to admit of much soaring into the realms of fantasy.  Unaroused by any strong stimulus in their ponderings over the riddle of the universe, the sober, plodding scientists and the calm, truth-loving philosophers gained a peaceful victory over the mythologists.

CHAPTER IV

The Gods of China

The Birth of the Soul

The dualism noted in the last chapter is well illustrated by the Chinese pantheon.  Whether as the result of the co-operation of the yin and the yang or of the final dissolution of P’an Ku, human beings came into existence.  To the primitive mind the body and its shadow, an object and its reflection in water, real life and dream life, sensibility and insensibility (as in fainting, etc.), suggest the idea of another life parallel with this life and of the doings of the ‘other self’ in it.  This ‘other self,’ this spirit, which leaves the body for longer or shorter intervals in dreams, swoons, death, may return or be brought back, and the body revive.  Spirits which do not return or are not brought back may cause mischief, either alone, or by entry into another human or animal body or even an inanimate object, and should therefore be propitiated.  Hence worship and deification.

The Populous Otherworld

The Chinese pantheon has gradually become so multitudinous that there is scarcely a being or thing which is not, or has not been at some time or other, propitiated or worshipped.  As there are good and evil people in this world, so there are gods and demons in the Otherworld:  we find a polytheism limited only by a polydemonism.  The dualistic hierarchy is almost all-embracing.  To get a clear idea of this populous Otherworld, of the supernal and infernal hosts and their organizations, it needs but to imagine the social structure in its main features as it existed throughout the greater part of Chinese history, and to make certain additions.  The social structure consisted of the ruler, his court, his civil, military, and ecclesiastical officials, and his subjects (classed as Scholars—­officials and gentry—­Agriculturists, Artisans, and Merchants, in that order).

Worship of Shang Ti