[4] See Myths of the Norsemen, by H. A. Guerber. These resemblances and the further one—namely, the dualism in the prechaotic epoch (a very interesting point in Scandinavian mythology)—illustrate the danger of inferring identity of origin from similarity of physical, intellectual, or moral results. Several remarkable parallelisms of Chinese religious and mythological beliefs with those recorded in the Hebrew scriptures may also be briefly noted. There is an age of virtue and happiness, a garden with a tree bearing ‘apples of immortality,’ guarded by a winged serpent (dragon), the fall of man, the beginnings of lust and war (the doctrine of original sin), a great flood, virgin-born god-men who rescue man from barbarism and endow him with superhuman attributes, discipleship, worship of a Virgin Mother, trinities, monasticism, celibacy, fasting, preaching, prayers, primeval Chaos, Paradise, etc. For details see Chinese Repository, vii, 520–521.
[5] Cf. the dwarfs in the Scandinavian myth.
[6] See Legge, Shu ching, ii, 320, note.
[7] In order to avoid misunderstanding, it is as well to note that the mention of the t’ai chi in the Canon of Changes (I ching) no more constituted monism the philosophy of China than did the steam-driven machinery mentioned by Hero of Alexandria constitute the first century B.C. the ‘age of steam.’ Similarly, to take another example, the idea of the earth’s rotundity, though conceived centuries before Ptolemy in the second century, did not become established before the sixteenth century. It was, in fact, from the I ching that the Chinese derived their dualistic (not their monistic) conception of the world.
[8] “Formerly, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flying about and feeling that it was enjoying itself. I did not know that it was Chou. Suddenly I awoke and was myself again, the veritable Chou. I did not know whether it had formerly been Chou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or whether it was now a butterfly dreaming that it was Chou.” Chuang Tzŭ, Book II.