ansformation and of
making itself visible or invisible. At will it reduces itself to the
size of a silk-worm, or is swollen until it fills the space of heaven
and earth. This is the creature especially preeminent in art, literature
and rhetoric. There are nine kinds of dragons, all with various features
and functions, and artists and authors revel in their representation.
The celestial dragon guards the mansions of the gods and supports them
lest they fall; the spiritual dragon causes the winds to blow and rain
to descend for the service of mankind; the earth dragon marks out the
courses of rivers and streams; the dragon of the hidden treasures
watches over the wealth concealed from mortals, etc. Outwardly, the
dragon of superstition resembles the geological monsters brought to
resurrection by our paleontologists. He seems to incarnate all the
attributes and forces of animal life--vigor, rapidity of motion,
endurance, power of offence in horn, hoof, claw, tooth, nail, scale and
fiery breath. Being the embodiment of all force the dragon is especially
symbolical of the emperor. Usually associated with malevolence, one
sees, besides the conventional art and literature of civilization, the
primitive animistic idea of men to whose mind this mysterious universe
had no unity, who believed in myriad discordant spirits but knew not of
"one Law-giver, who is able both to save and to destroy." An
enlargement, possibly, of prehistoric man's reminiscence of now extinct
monsters, the dragon is, in its artistic development, a mythical
embodiment of all the powers of moisture to bless and to harm. We shall
see how, when Buddhism entered China, the cobra-de-capello, so often
figured in the Buddhistic representations of India, is replaced by the
dragon.

Yet besides these four incarnations of the spirits that misrule the
world there is a host, a menagerie of mythical monsters. In Korea, one
of the Asian countries richest in demonology, beast worship is very
prevalent. Mythical winged tigers and flying serpents with attributes of
fire, lightning and combinations of forces not found in any one
creature, are common to the popular fancy. In Japan, the _kappa_, half
monkey half tortoise, which seizes children bathing in the rivers, as
real to millions of the native common folk as is the shark or porpoise;
the flying-weasel, that moves in the whirlwind with sickle-like blades
on his claws, which cut the face of the unfortunate; the wind-god or