so bare of great men. Had it not been for the dreamers of history, we should have had no Columbus, or Newton, or Hideyoshi or Genghis Khan. Imagination is the mother of enterprise and the forerunner of achievement, and the lack of it has made Korea the " shrimp between two whales."
But some may say that the common belief in evil spirits and the genii of mountain, tree and stream implies a high degree of imaginative power. Not so; this is nothing but instinct, the natural working of the law of self-preservation. You might as well say that the porcupine has imagination because he rolls up into a ball and presents the thorny side of life to the approaching enemy. The crudest method of explaining obscure phenomena is the attributing of them to the agency of demons, genii and spirits. So far from being evidence of an imaginative nature, this demon worship argues the very opposite. He fails to see things in their proper relations, and he remains oblivious of the fact that, running through these phenomena, there is a oneness of plan and an adaptation of means to ends which precludes the possibility of his horde of spirits. It is moral instinct which has led him to reason out some personal agency in the conduct of human affairs. In other words, it is conscience, which, from the pagan point of view, does " make cowards of us all." The consciousness of personal demerit makes the Korean picture his spirits and goblins as inimical to man, and produces that servility, as distinguished from humility, which is indelibly stamped upon all pagan worship.
But we must hasten to enumerate briefly some of the most conspicuous forms of Korean art. We have already mentioned music. Architecture has never been looked upon here as a fine art. It is entirely utilitarian, except in the case of royal palaces and temples, and even here art is exhibited almost exclusively in the decorations. These and other architectural decorations may be passed by with brief mention, for they are anything but artistic to the Western eye. In mural decoration they have produced some pleasing effects, but they are very crude and will
