Unlike the Greeks and Hindoos, the Chinese are deficient in the sort of imagination that breeds a poetical mythology. They are not, however, wanting in that pride of race which is prone to lay claim to the past as well as to the future. They have accordingly constructed, not a mythology, but a fictitious history which begins with the creation of the world. How men and animals were made they do not say; but they assert that heaven and earth were united in a state of chaos until a divine man, whom they call P'an-ku, the "ancient founder," rent them asunder. Pictures show him wielding his sledge-hammer and disengaging sun and moon from overlying hills--a grotesque conception in strong contrast with the simple and sublime statement, "God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light." P'an-ku was followed by a divine being named Nü-wa, in regard to whom it [Page 71] is doubtful whether to speak in the feminine or in the masculine gender. Designated queen more frequently than king, it is said of her that, a portion of the sky having fallen down (probably owing to the defective work of her predecessor), she rebuilt it with precious stones of many colours. _Lien shih pu tien_, "to patch the sky with precious stones," is a set phrase by which the Chinese indicate that which is fabulous and absurd. Instead of filling the long interval between the creation of the world and the birth of history with gods and fairies, the Chinese cover that period by three sovereigns whom they call after their favourite triad, heaven, earth, and man, giving them the respective titles Tién-hwang, Ti-hwang, and Jin-hwang. Each of these reigned eighteen thousand years; but what they reigned over is not apparent. At all events they seem to have contributed little to the comfort of their people; for at the close of that long period the wretched inhabitants of the empire--the only country then known to exist on earth--had no houses, no clothes, no laws, and no letters.