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.
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