Note 613 — Chapter X · —Man's Relation To The Water

This is the social or political gain; but this is not all. The danger emanating from natural phenomena has its discoverable laws, and therefore leads to a first empirical study of winds, currents, seasonal rainfall and the whole science of hydraulics. With deep national insight, the Greeks embodied in their mythology the story of Perseus and his destruction of the sea monster who ravaged the coast, and Hercules' killing of the many-headed serpent who issued from the Lernean Marshes to lay waste the country of Argos. Even so early a writer as Strabo states that yet earlier authorities interpreted Hercules' victory over the river god of the Achelous as the embankment of that stream and the draining of its inundated delta tract by the national benefactor.613 So the Chinese, whose land abounds in swamps and devastating rivers, have a long list of engineer heroes who embanked and drained for the salvation and benefit of mankind. It is highly probable that the communal work involved in the construction of dikes and canals for the control of the Hoangho floods cemented the Chinese nationality of that vast lowland plain, and supplied the cohesive force that developed here at a very remote period a regularly organized state and an advancing civilization.