Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/480

 that we must attribute the virility of Confucian ethics as a code, even though there be no effort to live up to it. These ideas are such as belong to every religion and every civilisation, and it is just because they are fundamental principles of all human society that they survive, at least, as a recognised standard. They are axiomatic, and to deny them would be to disregard the plainest dictates of common sense.

These stories form, as I have said, the " Sunday-school " literature of the Koreans, and they are taken, as in the West, by a select few on select occasions. Everyone knows about them and has a general familiarity with their contents, just as every Western child knows about David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, Daniel and the lions; but just as in the Western nursery Mother Goose, Cinderella, Jack the Giant-killer, Alice in Wonderland and the Brownies are more in evidence than religious tales, so in Korea the dragon or fox story, the ipp and elf and goblin story, are told far oftener than the tales illustrative of Confucian ethics.

When we come to Buddhistic stories, we find a larger volume and a wider range. Being a mystical religion, Buddhism gives a much wider play to the imagination; being a spectacular religion, it gives opportunity for greater dramatic effect; carrying the soul beyond the grave and postulating a definite system of rewards and punishments, it affords a much broader stage for its characters to play their parts upon. The Confucian tales are short, intended each to point some particular moral, and conciseness is desirable ; but with the Buddhistic tales it is different. The plots are often long and intricate, the interrelation of human events is more carefully worked out and the play of human passions is given more extended illustration. They approach much closer to what we would call genuine fiction than do the Confucian tales. The latter are mere anecdotes, and afford no such stimulus to the imagination as the Buddhistic stories do.

Another reason why Buddhist tales are so common is that Buddhism was predominant in the peninsula for a period of