And now it is high time that we examined thatreligion which was so closely associated with the whole national life of Peru.
From all that I have said already, you will easily understand that the Sun has never been worshipped more directly or with more devotion than in Peru. It was he whom the Peruvians regarded as sovereign lord of the world, king of the heaven and the earth. His Peruvian name wasInti, "Light." The villages were usually built so as to look eastward, in order that the inhabitants might salute the supreme god as soon as he appeared in the morning. The most usual representation of him was a golden disk representing a human face surrounded by rays and flames. In Peru, as everywhere else, a feeling existed that there was a certain relation between the substance of gold and that of the great luminary. In the nuggets torn from the mountain sides they thought they saw the Sun's tears.[75]The great periodic fêtes of the year, the imperial and national festivals in which every one took part, were those held in honour of the Sun.
Immediately after him came his sister and consort the Moon, Mama Quilla. Her image was a disk of silver bearing human features, and silver played the same part in her worship that gold did in that of the Sun. It appears, however, that they performed fewer sacrifices to her than to her august consort, which is quite in harmony with the inferior position assigned to woman in the Peruvian civilization.[76]Like Selene amongst the Greeks, Mama Quilla, and her incarnation in human form, Mama Ogllo, were weavers. And that is why the latter was said to have taught the Peruvian women the art of spinning and weaving. This is a mythological conception suggested by likening the moonbeams to twisted threads, out of which on fair clear nights the brilliant verdure in which the earth is clad is spun.
But before going on to the gods who form the usual retinue of these two official and imperial deities, I must speak of two great Peruvian gods whose worship was likewise widely spread, but who nevertheless are not attached to the solar family, orat least are only so attached by an after-thought and by dint of harmonizing efforts which the Incas had their motives of policy for favouring: I mean the two great deities,ViracochaandPachacamac.
The myth of Viracocha is the first instance we shall cite of traces of a certain civilization prior to the Incas, or at any rate of a belief widely spread in some parts of Peru that civilization had not really been, as the legend of the Incas would have it, the sole work of that sacerdotal family. The name of Viracocha must be very ancient, for it became a generic name to signify divine beings. It was given to Manco Capac himself as a title of honour, and the Spaniards on their arrival passed asViracochasin the eyes of the people. This name, according to Spanish authorities, followed by Prescott,[77]signifiesFoam of the seaor of thelake. This would make the deity a male Aphrodite. He was represented with a long beard, and human victims were sacrificed to him. At the same time, they said that he had neither flesh nor bone, that he ran swiftly, and thathe lowered mountains and lifted up valleys. The following legend was told of him.[78]
There were men on the earth before the Sun appeared, and the temples of Viracocha, for instance, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, are older than the Sun. One day Viracocha rose out of the lake. He made the sun, the moon, the stars, and prescribed their course for them. Then he made stone statues, put life into them, and commanded them to go out of the caverns in which he had made them and follow him to Cuzco. There he summoned the inhabitants, and set a man over them called Allca Vica, who was the common ancestor of the Incas. Then he departed and disappeared in the water.
Evidently this myth belongs to a different body of tradition from that of the Incas. When it says that the earth was peopled before the Sun appeared, it is only a mythical way of asserting that there were men and even cities in Peru before the establishment of Sun-worship by the Incas. Now thelatter claimed direct descent from the Sun, the supreme god, and they would not have readily allowed that this supreme deity had been made by another. One is rather tempted to find in this myth the echo of the claims put forward with equal resignation and persistency by a priesthood of Viracocha, that bowed its head before the supremacy acquired by the solar priesthood, but insisted all the same upon the fact that it was itself its elder brother.
But to what element can we affiliate the god Viracocha himself?
His aquatic name,Foam of the seaorlake, in itself leads us to suppose that he was closely related to the water. The supposition is confirmed by the saying that he had neither flesh nor bone, and yet ran swiftly. We can understand, too, why he lowers mountains and raises valleys. He rises from the water and disappears in it. He is bearded, like all aquatic gods, with their fringes of reeds. Finally, his consort and sister Cocha is the lake itself, and also the goddess of rain. An old Peruvian hymn that was chanted under the Incas, and has fortunately been preserved, raises the character we have assignedto Viracocha above all doubt.[79]The goddess Cocha is represented as carrying an urn full of water and snow on her head. Her brother Viracocha breaks the urn, that its contents may spread over the earth. Here is the hymn, which is composed in nineteen short verses or lines:
1. Fair Princess,3. Thy urn2. Thy brother4. Shatters.5. At the blow6. It thunders, lightens7. Flashes;8. But thou, Princess,10. Rainest down9. Thy waters.11. At the same time12. Hailest,13. Snowest.14. World-former,15. World-animator,16. Viracocha,17. To this office18. Thee has destined,19. Consecrated.
It admits of no doubt, therefore, that Viracocha held a place in the Peruvian Pantheon closely analogous to that of Tlaloc, the rain-god, in its Mexican counterpart. The blow with which he breaks his sister's urn is the thunder-stroke. Inasmuch as rain is a fertilizing agent, Viracocha represents its generative force. His resemblance to Tlaloc extends to his demand for human victims, in which he is less ferociously insatiable, but quite as pronounced, as his Mexican analogue. Since his legend makes him rise out of the Lake of Titicaca, we must think of him as the chief god of the religion in honour before that of the Incas rose to supremacy. When it is said that after accomplishing his task he disappeared, we are reminded that the river Desaguadero, which carries off the waters of Lake Titicaca, sinks into the earth and is lost to sight.
But there was yet another great deity whose pretensions the Incas had allowed by making room for him in the official religion, although he really belonged to a totally different group of mythicalformations: I refer to Pachacamac, whose name signifies "animator of the earth," fromcaman, "to animate," andpacha, "earth."[80]The primitive centre of his worship was in the valley of Lurin, south of Lima, as well as in that valley of Rimac which has given its name to the city of Lima itself, for the latter is but a transformation ofRimac. It was there that Pachacamac's colossal temple rose. It was left standing by the Incas, but is now in ruins.[81]The branch of the Yuncas who resided there were already possessed of a certain civilization when the Inca Pachacutec annexed their country, at the close of the fourteenth century, partly by persuasion and partly by terror. Pachacamac was the divine civilizer who had taught this people the arts and crafts.[82]It would even seem that he had supplanted a still more ancient worship of Viracocha in these same valleys, for it is said that the latter was worsted in war by him and put to flight, upon which the new god renewed the world by changingthe people he found on the earth into jaguars and monkeys, and creating a new and higher race. This opposition to Viracocha, god of the waters, puts us on the traces of Pachacamac's original significance. He must have been a god of fire, and especially of the internal fire of the earth, which displays itself in the volcanos and warms the spirit of man. He was a kind of Peruvian Dionysus. There was something gloomy and violent about his worship. He demanded human victims. The valley of Rimac really means the valley of theSpeaker, of him who answers when questioned. There was a kind of oracle inspired by the god of internal fire there. A certain feeling of mystery, as though in Pachacamac they had to do with a god less visible, less palpable, more spiritual than the rest, seems to have impressed itself upon his Peruvian worshippers. Garcilasso, who perhaps exaggerates a little, here as elsewhere, goes near to making him a god who could only be adored in the heart, without temple and without sacrifices.[83]
Thus, if the myth of Viracocha, god of the waters,makes the stars and the earth rise out of the moist element which he has fertilized and organized, the myth of Pachacamac makes him a kind of demiurge working within to form the world and enlighten mankind. I need not stay to point out what close analogies these two conceptions find in several of the cosmogonies of the Old World.
This confusion and rivalry of the Peruvian gods has left its traces in the crude and obscure legend of the Collas, or mountaineers of Pacari Tambo, to the south-west of Cuzco. "From the caves of Pacari Tambo (i.e. 'the house of the dawn') issued one day four brothers and four sisters. The eldest ascended a mountain, and flung stones towards the four cardinal points, which was his way of taking possession of all the land. This aroused the displeasure of the other three. The youngest of all was the cunningest, and he resolved to get rid of his three brothers and reign alone. He persuaded his eldest brother to enter a cave, and as soon as he had done so closed the mouth with an enormous stone, and imprisoned him there for ever." This seems to refer to the quasi-subterranean cultus ofPachacamac, the internal fire, the first revelation of whom must have been a volcano hurling stones in every direction.—"The youngest brother then persuaded the second to ascend a high mountain with him, to seek their lost brother, and when they stood on the summit he hurled him down the precipice and changed him into a stone by a spell." I cannot say to what special deity this part of the legend alludes, unless it simply refers to an ancient worship of stones or rocks, many vestiges of which remained under the Incas, though it ceased to have any official importance in presence of the radiant worship of the Sun promulgated and favoured by the ruling family.—"Then the third brother fled in terror." This fleeing god must be Viracocha, the god of showers, who flees before the Sun.—"Then the youngest brother built Cuzco, caused himself to be adored as child of the Sun under the name of Pirrhua Manco, and likewise built other cities on the same model."[84]
This last trait puts it out of doubt that the legend is really an attempt to explain how the religion of Manco Capac established at Cuzco had succeeded in eclipsing all others, owing to the superior skill of its priesthood. It is a formal confirmation of all that I have told you of the consummate art with which the Incas gradually extended the circle of their political and religious dominion.Pirrhuais the contraction of Viracocha, taken in the generic sense of "divine being." Pirrhua Manco was an alternative name of Manco Capac.
Of course this legend was not officially received under the Incas. The latter, being unable or unwilling to abolish the worship of Viracocha and of Pachacamac, took up a far more conciliatory attitude than that of the legends I have given. The supreme god, the Sun, was admitted to have had three sons, Kon or Viracocha, Pachacamac and Manco Capac; but the latter was declared to have been quite specially designed by the common father to instruct and govern men. By this arrangement every one was satisfied,—and especially the Incas.
We may now return to the other deities who were officially incorporated in the family or retinue of the Sun.
The rainbow,Cuycha, was the object of great veneration as the servant of the Sun and Moon. He had his chapel contiguous with the temple of the Sun, and his image was made of plates of gold of various shades, which covered a whole wall of the edifice. When a rainbow appeared in the clouds, the Peruvian closed his mouth for fear of having all his teeth spoilt.[85]
The planet Venus,Chascaor the "long-haired star," so called from its extraordinary radiance, was looked upon as a male being and as the page of the Sun, sometimes preceding and sometimes following his master. The Pleiades were next most venerated. Comets foreboded the wrath of the gods. The other stars were the Moon's maids of honour.[86]
The worship of the elements, too, held a prominent place in this complicated system of nature-worship. For example, Fire, considered as derived from the Sun, was the object of profound veneration, and the worship rendered it must have served admirably as a link between the religion of the Incas and that of Pachacamac. Strange as it may seem at first sight, the symbols of fire were stones. But our surprise will cease when we remember that stones were thought, in a high antiquity, to be animated by the fire that was supposed to be shut up within them, since it could be made to issue forth by a sharp blow. The Peruvian religion likewise adds its testimony to that of all the religions of the Old World, as to the importance which long attached to the preservation amongst the tribes of men of that living fire which it was so difficult to recover if once it had been allowed to escape. A perpetual fire burned in the temple of the Sun and in the abode of the Virgins of the Sun, of whom we shall have to speak presently. The wide-spread idea that fire becomes polluted at last and loses its divine virtue by too long contact with men,meets us once more. The fire must be renewed from time to time, and this act was performed yearly by the chief-priest of Peru, who kindled wood by means of a concave golden mirror. This miracle is very easy for us to explain, but we cannot doubt that the priests and people of Peru saw something supernatural in the phenomenon.[87]
The thunder, likewise, was personified and adored in certain provinces under the name ofCatequil, but it is a peculiarity of the Peruvian religion that it assigns a subordinate rank in the hierarchy to the god of thunder, who elsewhere generally takes the supreme place. In Peru, he was but one of the Sun's servants, though the most redoubtable of them all. The Peruvians are remarkable for their childish dread of thunder. A great projecting rock, often one that had been struck by the thunder, passed for the deity's favoured residence. Catequil appears in three forms:Chuquilla(thunder),Catuilla(lightning), andIntiallapa(thunderbolt). His remaining name,Illapa, also means thunder. Hehad special temples, in which he was represented as armed with a sling and a club.[88]They sacrificed children, but more especially llamas, to him. Twins were regarded as children of the lightning, and if they died young their skeletons were preserved as precious relics. And, finally, we find in Peru the same idea that prevails in a great part of southern Africa, viz. that a house or field that has been struck by lightning cannot be used again. Catequil has taken possession of it, and it would be dangerous to dispute it with him.[89]
We have seen how the element of water was adored under the names of Viracocha and his sister Mama Cocha. The earth was worshipped in grottos or caves, often considered as the places whence men and gods had taken their origin, and as giving oracles.[90]There were also trees and plants that were clothed with a divine character, especially the esculent plants, such as the maize, personified asZarap Conopa, and the potato, asPapap Conopa. A femalestatue was often made of maize or coca leaves, and adored as the mother of plants.[91]
Thus we descend quite gently from the official heights of the religion of the Incas towards those substrata of religious thought which always maintain themselves beneath the higher religion that more or less expressly patronizes them, but to which they are not really bound by any necessary tie. They are the survivals of old superstitions, to which the common people are often far more attached than they are to the exalted doctrines which they are taught officially. And it is thus, for example, that we note in Peru the very popular worship of numerous animals, mounting, without doubt, to a much higher antiquity than was reached by the religion of the Incas. Indeed, I should be inclined to ascribe to the religious diplomacy of the children of the Sun the Peruvian belief which established a connection of origin between each kind of animal and a particular star. The serpent, especially, seems to have been, in Peru as in Africa, the object ofgreat veneration. We find it reproduced in wood and stone on an enormous number of the greater and smaller relics of Peruvian art. The god of subterranean treasures,Urcaguay, was a great serpent, with little chains of gold at his tail, and a head adorned with stag-like horns. The dwellers by the shore worshipped the whale and the shark. There were fish-gods, too, in the temple of Pachacamac, no doubt because of the enormous power of reproduction possessed by fishes. The condor was a messenger of the Sun, and his image was graven on the sceptre of the Incas.[92]It is remarkable that the llama does not appear amongst these divine animals, probably because it was so completely domesticated and wholly subject to man.
And finally, when we come to theGuacas, orHuacas, we reach the point where the Peruvian religion sinks into absolute fetichism.
The meaning of the wordGuaca, orHuaca, was not very precise in the mouths of the Peruvians themselves. On the one hand, it was applied toeverything that bore a religious character, whether an object of worship, the person of the priests, a temple, a tomb, or what not. The Sun himself wasHuaca. The chief priest of Cuzco bore amongst other names that ofHuacapvillac, "he who converses with huaca beings."[93]On the other hand, in ordinary language, this same term was used to signify those wood, stone and metal objects which were so abundant in Peru, of which we still possess numerous specimens, and of which we must now say a few words. Some of these huacas, especially the stone ones, were of considerable size, and no doubt dated from the pre-historic religion before the Incas. But as a rule they were small and portable, were private and hereditary property, and were regarded as veritable fetiches, that is to say, as the dwelling-places of spirits. Animism, in fact, never ceased to haunt the imaginations of the Peruvians, especially amongst the lower orders, whether the spirits were dreaded as malevolent sprites, or courted as protectors and revealers. These huacas represented (as true fetichesshould) forms which were sometimes animal, sometimes human, sometimes simply grotesque, but always ugly and exaggerated. Every valley, every tribe, every temple, every chief, had a guardian spirit. Those which were analogous topænates publiciwere recognized by the Incas, who endowed them with flocks and various presents. Often a stone in the middle of the village passed as the abode of the patron spirit of the place. It was thehuacacoal, the stone of the huaca, whereas the huacas of the family or house were distinguished asconopas. Meteorites or thunderbolts were in great demand as huacas, and especially amongst lovers, since they were supposed to inspire a reciprocity of affection. The Christian missionaries had more difficulty in rooting out the worship of the Huacas than in abolishing that of the Sun and Moon, and we may still detect numerous traces of this ancient superstition amongst the natives of Peru.[94]
Let us now turn to the priesthood which presided over the worship of these numerous deities.
There was no sacerdotal caste in Peru, or, to speak more correctly, the Inca family constituted the only sacerdotal caste in the strict sense of the word. This family retained for itself all the highest positions in the priesthood, as well as in the army and administration. These priests of the higher rank bore special garments and insignia, while the lower clergy wore the ordinary costume. At the head of all the priests of the empire, first after the reigning Inca, stood theVillac Oumau, "the chief sacrificer," also, as we have seen, called theHuacapvillac. He was nominated by the reigning Inca, and in his turn nominated all his subordinates. His name indicates that he was the living oracle, the interpreter of the will of the Sun. You can understand, therefore, how important it was for the policy of the Incas that he should himself be subject to the authority and discretion of the sovereign. After him came the rest of the chief priests, also members of the Inca family, whom he put in charge of the provincial temples of theSun. At Cuzco itself all the priests had to be Incas. They were divided into squadrons, which attended in succession, according to the quarters of the moon, to the elaborate ritual of the service. And here we must admire the consummate art with which the Incas had planned everything in their empire to secure their supremacy against all attaint, in religion as in all else, while still leaving the successively annexed populations a certain measure of religious freedom. In the provinces, the Inca family, numerous as it was, could not have provided priests for all the sanctuaries; and, moreover, there would be local rites, traditions, perhaps even priesthoods, which could not well be fitted into the framework of the official religion. The Incas therefore had decided that the priests of the local deities should be affiliated to the imperial priesthood, but in such a way that the chief priests of the local deities should at the same time be subordinate priests of the deities of the empire. What a wonderful stroke of political genius! What happier method could have been found of teaching the subject populations, while still maintaining their traditional forms of worship,to regard the imperial cultus patronized by the reigning Inca as superior to all others? And what an invaluable guarantee of obedience was obtained by this association of the non-Inca priests with the official priesthood, the honours and advantages of which they were thus made to share, without any room for an aspiration after independence! I regard this organization of the priesthood in ancient Peru as one of the most striking proofs of the political genius of the Incas, and as one of the facts which best explain how a theocracy, which was after all based on the absolute and exclusive pretensions of one special mythology, was able to consolidate itself and endure for centuries, while exercising a large toleration towards other traditions and forms of worship.[95]
By the side of the priests there were also priestesses; and they were clothed with a very special function. I refer to thoseVirgins of the Sun(acllia= chosenones), those Peruvian nuns, who so much impressed the early historians of Peru. There were convents of these Virgins at Cuzco and in the chief cities of the empire. At Cuzco there were five hundred of them, drawn for the most part from the families of the Incas and theCuracasor nobles, although (for a reason which will be apparent presently) great beauty gave even a daughter of the people a sufficient title to enter the sacred abode. They had a lady president—I had almost said a "mother abbess"—who selected them while yet quite young; and under her superior direction, matrons, orMamaconas, superintended the young flock. They lived encloistered, in absolute retreat, without any relationship with the outside world. Only the reigning Inca, his chief wife, theCoya, and the chief priest, were allowed to penetrate this sanctuary of the virgins. Now these visits of the Inca's were not exactly disinterested. The fact is, that it was here he generally looked for recruits for his harem. You will ask how that could be reconciled with the vow of chastity which the maidens had taken; but their promise had been never to take any consort except the Sun,orhim to whom the Sun should give them. Now the Inca, the child of the Sun, his representative and incarnation upon earth, began by assigning the most beautiful to himself, after which he might give some of those who had not found special favour in his eyes to his Curacas. And thus the vow was kept intact. In other respects, the most absolute chastity was sternly enforced. If any nun violated her vow, or was unhappy enough to allow the sacred fire that burned day and night in the austere abode to be extinguished, the penalty was death. And the strange thing is, that the mode of death was identical with that which awaited the Roman vestal guilty of the same offences. The culprit was buried alive. This illustrates the value of the theories started by those authors who can never discover any resemblance of rites or beliefs between two peoples without forthwith setting about to inquire which of the two borrowed from the other! It will hardly be maintained that the Peruvians borrowed this cruel custom from the ancient Romans, and assuredly the Romans did not get it from Peru. Whence, then, can the resemblance spring? From the same trainof ideas leading to the same conclusion. By the sacrilege of the culprit, the gods of heaven and of light, the protecting and benevolent deities, were offended and incensed, and the whole country would feel the tokens of their wrath. To disarm their anger, its unhappy cause must expiate her guilt, and at the same time must be removed from their sight and given over to the powers of darkness, for she was no longer worthy to see the light. And that is why the dark tomb must swallow her. She had betrayed her spouse the Sun—let her henceforth be the spouse and the slave of darkness; and let her be sent alive to those dark powers, that they might do with her as they would. We must add that the guilty nun's accomplice was strangled, and that her whole family from first to last was put to death.
The ordinary occupations of the Virgins of the Sun consisted in making garments for the members of the imperial family and tapestries destined to adorn the temples and palaces, in kneading and baking the sacred loaves, preparing the sacred drinks, and, finally, in watching and feeding the sacred fire. You perceive that it was not exactly the asceticprinciple which had given rise to these convents—as in the case of the Buddhist and Christian institutions, for example—but rather the desire to do honour to the Sun, the supreme god, by consecrating seraglios to him, in which his numerous consorts, protected by a severe rule, could be kept from all except himself and those to whom he might give them; accomplishing, meanwhile, those menial tasks which, especially under the rule of polygamy, woman is required to perform in the abode of her lord and master.[96]
All this shows us once more, Gentlemen, how the same fundamental logic of the human mind asserts itself across a thousand diversities, and re-appears under every conceivable form in every climate and every race. Only let us look close enough and with the requisite information, and we shall find in every case that all is explained, that all holds together, that all is justified, by some underlying principle, and that "that idiot of a word,"chance, is never anything but a veil for our ignorance. And thus, when we notice anything paradoxical, grotesque, and unexplained by the resources we command at present, we must be very careful not to pronounce it inexplicable. We should rather suspend our judgment, wait till wider reflection and renewed investigation have shown us the middle terms, and meanwhile keep silence rather than attribute to chance or to influences which escape all human reason the phenomena that seem abnormal.
For instance, you have heard sometimes of the strange custom in accordance with which the father of a new-born child goes to bed and is nursed as an invalid. You are perhaps aware that this custom, that appears so strange to us and is now restricted to a few savage tribes, was noted in ancient times in Europe itself, and has been preserved almost to our own time in certain cantons of the Pyrenees. It must therefore have been extremely wide-spread. Yet for a long time it seemed inexplicable. But now, thanks to investigations and comparisons, the explanation has been found. There is no doubt that the custom in question rested on the idea thatthere was a close solidarity between the health of the father and that of the new-born babe, so that if the father should fall sick, his far weaker child would die. The father, therefore, must be guarded from all over-exertion, must abstain from all excess—in short, was best in bed!
So, too, in the present case. How are we to explain the resemblance between the treatment of the Vestals at Rome and the Virgins of the Sun at Cuzco? It was once impossible, but now that we are better acquainted with the genesis, the spirit, the inner logic of the primitive religions, and the modes of life, the wants and the apprehensions proper to the pre-historic ages, we have no difficulty in attaching two parallel customs to a single religious principle which had found acceptance alike in Italy and Peru. And this is one of the chief tasks, and one of the greatest charms, of the branch of study which I have the honour of professing. It shows us that even in human error, human reason has never abdicated its throne.
We have still to speak of the temples, the ritual and the chief festivals of ancient Peru. To thesesubjects we shall devote the first part of our sixth and last Lecture, reserving the closing portion for the conclusions and the general lessons suggested by our two-fold study of Mexico and Peru.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
To complete my account of the native religion of Peru, I have still to speak of the cultus, the festivals, the religious ethics, and the ideas of a future life.
The Peruvian cultus had given birth to thetemple;and, indeed, it is highly interesting to witness what one may call the "genesis of the temple" on this soil, so different from those of the Old World. There were temples, indeed, before the Incas, but they differed both in style and in signification from those reared under their patronage. In Peru, as in Mexico, the temples were originallyneither more nor less than extremely lofty altars; that is to say, artificial elevations, on the summit of which the sacrifices were presented, while a little chapel served to contain the image of the god or gods adored. Round this great altar were grouped other chapels, galleries and columns, as though to accompany the great central altar formed by the eminence itself. Under the Incas, the crowning chapel increased so enormously that it encircled the altar and became the essential part of the sacred structure. The Inca temples were veritable palaces, destined as abodes for the gods. None of them remain; but their ruins attest the fact that the architects aimed rather at colossal than at beautiful effects. They contained gigantic stone statues, gates cut out of monoliths, and the well-known pyramidal structures of which we have spoken already. The most imposing of the temples was the one at Cuzco, which consisted in a vast central edifice, flanked with a number of adjacent buildings. Gold was so prodigally lavished on its interior that it bore the name ofCoricancha,that is to say, "the place of gold." The roof was formed by timber-work of preciouswoods plated with gold, but was covered, as in the case of all the houses of the land, with a simple thatch of maize straw. The doors opened to the East, and at the far end, above the altar, was the golden disk of the Sun, placed so as to reflect the first rays of the morning on its brilliant surface, and, as it were, reproduce the great luminary. And note that the mummies of the departed Incas, children of the Sun, were ranged in a semicircle round the sacred disk on golden thrones, so that the morning rays came day by day to shine on their august remains. The adjacent buildings were abodes of the deities who formed the retinue of the Sun. The principal one was sacred to the Moon, his consort, who had her disk of silver, and ranged around her the ancient queens, the departedCoyas. Others served as the abodes of Chaska, our planet Venus, the Pleiades, the Thunder, the Rainbow, and finally the officiating priests of the temple. In the provinces, the Incas reared a number of temples of the Sun on the model of that at Cuzco, but on a smaller scale.[97]
The Incas, however, had been anticipated in this striking development of the temple by the religions anterior or adjacent to their own. Witness the great temple of Pachacamac, which they left standing in the valley of Lurin, and the remarkable ruins of another great temple situated at some miles distance from Lake Titicaca, which has quite recently been made the subject of a careful reconstructive study by your compatriot Mr. Inwards.[98]
The offerings presented to the gods were very varied in kind. Flowers, fragrant incense, especially from preparations of coca, vegetables, fruits, maize, prepared drinks offered in cups of gold. At some of the feasts the officiating priest moistened the tips of his fingers in the cup and flung the drops towards the Sun. We also find in Peru a very special form of that remnant of self-immolation which enters, in more or less reduced and restricted shape, into the devotions of so many peoples and assumes such varied forms. The Red-skin offers his sweat; theBlack offers his saliva or his teeth; the more poetical Greek, a lock of his hair, or even all of it. The Peruvian pulled out a hair from his eyebrow and blew it towards the idol![99]
But there were also sacrifices of blood. A llama was sacrificed every day at Cuzco. Before setting out on war, the Peruvians sacrificed a black llama that they had previously kept fasting, that the heart of their enemies might fail as did his. This was the Peruvian application of the principle that lies at the base of all those superstitious ceremonies intended to provoke or stimulate a desired effect by reproducing its analogue in advance. Small birds, rabbits, and, for the health of the Inca, black dogs, were also sacrificed frequently. All these offerings were as a rule burned, that they might so be transmitted to the gods.[100]It should be noted that they only sacrificed edible animals,[101]which is a clear proofthat the intention was to feed the gods. The sacrificing priest turned the animal's eyes towards the Sun, and opened its body to take out its heart, lungs and viscera, and offer them to the idols. It is a characteristic fact that when the victim was not burned, its flesh was divided amongst the sacrificers andeaten raw. The Peruvians had long learned to cook their meat, but this rite carries us back to a high antiquity, when cooking food was still an innovation which the power of tradition excluded from the ritual. It is to analogous causes that we must attribute the continued use of stone instruments in the religious ceremonies of peoples who are acquainted with iron and use it in ordinary life. In conclusion, they smeared the idols and the doors of the temples with the blood of the victims in order to appease the gods.[102]
All this is sufficiently crude and material, and rests upon the same premisses as those which drove the Mexicans to the frightful excesses which I have previously described. But humanity was far lessoutraged in the Peruvian than in the Mexican religion. Garcilasso deceives himself, or is attempting to deceive his readers, when he gives his ancestors, the Incas, the honour of having put an end to human sacrifices.[103]It is certain that in the religion of Pachacamac more especially this kind of sacrifice was frequent, and for that matter we know that it was universal in the primitive epochs. All that we can allow to the descendant of the Incas is, that they did not encourage, and were rather disposed to restrain, human sacrifice. But for all that, when the reigning Inca was ill, they sacrificed one of his sons to the Sun, and prayed him to accept the substitution of the son for the father. At certain feasts a young infant was immolated. Others were sacrificed to the subterranean spirits when a new Inca was enthroned. To the same category we must attach the custom which enjoined upon wives, especially those of the Incas, the duty of burying themselves alive on the death of their husbands. It is assertedthat when Huayna Capac died, a thousand members of his household incurred a voluntary death that they might go with him to serve him. The widows, however, were not compelled to take this step, and we know that the Incas had organized the support of widows without resources. But public opinion was not favourable to those who refused to follow their husbands to the tomb. It was regarded as a species of infidelity.[104]We see, however, from other well-established facts, that the Peruvian religion had been gradually softened. In Peru, as in China, instead of the living beings that they used formerly to bury with the dead, they now placed statuettes of men and women with him in his tomb to represent his wives and his servants.[105]
We must also mention those "columns of the Sun" which appear never to have been absent in countries dominated by a solar worship. We havealready seen them in Central America and in Mexico, and we also find them in Egypt, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Palestine, at Carthage and elsewhere. In these columns the idea of fertilization is associated with that of the pleasure the Sun must feel in tracing out their shadows as he caresses their faces and summits with his rays. The earliest quadrants were traced at the foot of these columns. In Peru, they were levelled at the top, and were regarded as "seats of the Sun," who loved to rest upon them. At the equinoxes and solstices they placed golden thrones upon them for him to sit upon. Those nearest to the equator were held in greatest veneration, because the shadows were shorter there than elsewhere, and the Sun appeared to rest vertically upon them.[106]
Prayer, in the proper sense of the word, asserted its place but feebly in the Peruvian religion. But hymns to the Sun were chanted at the great festivals and by the people as they went to cultivate the lands of the Sun. Every strophe ended withthe cry,Hailly, or "triumph." It was the PeruvianIo Pæan. These chants, as far as they are still known to us, have something soft and sad about them. The rule of the Incas, paternal indeed, but monotonous in the extreme, must have tended to produce melancholy. In 1555, a Spanish composer wrote a mass upon the themes of these indigenous airs. It was sung in chorus, and it is chiefly to it that we owe the preservation of these chants.[107]
But the grand form of religious demonstration among the Peruvians was the dance. They were very assiduous in this form of devotion, and indeed we know what a large place the earliest of the arts occupied in the primitive religions generally. The dance was the first and chief means adopted by pre-historic humanity of entering into active union with the deity adored. The first idea was to imitate the measured movements of the god, or at any rate what were supposed to be such. Afterwards, this fundamental motive was more or less forgotten; but the rite remained in force, likeso many other religious forms which tradition and habit sustained even when the spirit was gone. In Peru, this tradition was still full of life. The name of the principal Peruvian festivals,Raymi, signifies "dance." The performances were so animated, that the dancers seemed to the Europeans to be out of their senses. It is noteworthy that the Incas themselves took no part in these violent dances, but had an "Incas' dance" of their own, which was grave and measured.[108]
There were four great official festivals in the year, coinciding with the equinoxes and the solstices. The first was the festival of the Winter solstice, which fell in June. It was theRaymi, or festivalpar excellence, theCitoc Raymi, the feast of the diminished and (henceforth) growing Sun. It lasted nine days, the first three of which were given up to fasting. On the morning of the great day, a grand procession, led by the reigning Inca and his family, followed by the nobles and the people, proceeded, with insignia, banners and symbolic masks,towards the place of the dawn and the rising Sun. When the luminary appeared, the crowd fell to the earth and threw him kisses. The Inca presented the sacred beverage to the Sun, drank some of it himself, and passed it on to his suite. This was a sort of solar communion. Then they went to the temple of the Sun to sacrifice a black llama there. After this, they kindled the new fire by means of the concave mirror, and slaughtered a number of llamas, representing the Sun's present to the people. The pieces were distributed to the families, where they were eaten with the sacred cakes prepared by the Virgins of the Sun. This was the second act of communion with the luminary to whom the day was sacred. The remaining days of the festival were passed in rejoicings, when the people seem to have made themselves ample amends for the fast with which they had begun.[109]
The second great festival, that of Spring, which fell in September, was theCitua Raymi, the feast of Purification. But do not attach any essentiallymoral significance to the idea of purification. The object in view was to purify the territory from all influences hostile to the health, security and prosperity of the inhabitants. Ball-shaped cakes were eaten on this occasion, in which was mixed the blood of victims or of young children, who were not slaughtered however, but bled above the nose, which is evidence of a previous custom of far greater ferocity, and of the gradual softening of the Peruvian ritual. With this bread the people rubbed their bodies all over, and the doors of their houses likewise. Then, a little before sunset, a very strange ceremony was performed. An Inca, clad in precious armour and lance in hand, descended from the fortress of Cuzco, followed by four relatives whom the Sun had specially charged with the task of chasing away by open force all the maladies from the city and its environs. They traversed the chief streets of Cuzco at full speed, amid the acclamations of the inhabitants, and then surrendered their lances to others, who were relieved in their turn, till the limits of the ancient state of Cuzco were reached. There the lances were fixed in the ground, as somany talismans against evil influences. At night there was a great torch-light procession, at the close of which the torches were hurled into the river, and thus the evil spirits of the night were expelled, as those of the day had been by the lancers of the Sun.[110]Observe that in Africa, amongst the Blacks, a kind of "chase of the evil spirits" is practised (though accompanied with far fewer ceremonies than in Peru), in which the inhabitants of a village, armed with sticks and uttering formulæ of exorcism, expel the evil spirits from their houses and from their streets, and pursue them into the desert or the interior of a forest. But notice here, again, with what art the Incas had contrived to turn an old superstition to account in the interests of their own prestige. If maladies did not decimate the people of Cuzco, it was to their Incas that they owed their safety.
The third great festival, the Aymorai, which fell in May, celebrated the Harvest. A statue was constructed out of grains of corn glued together, andwas adored under the name ofPirrhua, which in this case may well be a contraction of Viracocha, the god of fertilizing moisture. On this occasion a number of sacrifices were made at home by the householders.[111]
The fourth great feast fell in December. It was theCapac Raymi, the festival of Power, in which the god of thunder was the object of a special worship by the side of the Sun. On this occasion the young Incas, after fasts, tournaments and other tests, received the investiture of manhood by having their ears pierced, and receiving a scarf, an axe and a crown of flowers. The young Curacas of the same age were also admitted to the privileges and duties of their rank, and shared with the Inca the sacred bread in token of indissoluble communion with him.[112]
There were also a number of other and less important feasts. Each month had one of its own. Then there were occasional feasts, to celebrate the triumphal return of a victorious Inca for example, or when the tournaments of the young nobles, towhich a religious value was attached, took place, or when silent processions lasting a day and night, and followed by dances, were instituted to avert threatening calamities, and so forth.[113]In Peru, as in so many other regions, eclipses were the subject of great terror. The eclipses of the Sun were attributed to his own anger, those of the Moon to an illness caused by the attack of an evil spirit, to frighten which away and put it to flight a hideous yelling was raised.[114]
There were sorcerers in Peru as everywhere else; but in Peru too, as everywhere else where a priesthood has acquired a regular organization and made its authority respected, sorcery was hardly resorted to save by the lower classes.[115]In fact, the sorcerer is the priest of backward tribes, and the priest is the developed sorcerer. By his superior knowledge, by the more stable guarantees which he can give as the member of an imposing organization, by thenature of the religion of which he is the organ, and which raises him above the incoherent puerilities of animism, the priest eclipses the sorcerer and relegates him to the lower strata of society, which is just where his own titles to superiority are least appreciated. The sorcerer sinks in proportion as the priest rises.[116]For the rest, the official priesthood had its own diviners, who could foretel the future, theHuacarimachi, or "they who make the gods speak." The oracles of the valley of Rimac or Lima were much frequented; and, moreover, the Peruvians, like so many peoples of the Old World, thought that they could read the future in the entrails of the victims offered in sacrifice.[117]This wide-spread belief rests on the idea that immolation unites the victim so closely to the deity that it enters into communion with his thoughts and intentions, so that its heart, liver, and all other organs supposed to be affected by mental and moral dispositions, receive the impress of the divineprevision. Is it not passing strange, Gentlemen, that this mode of divination, which appears so absurd to us, which has no rational basis whatever, which rests on a singularly subtle conception of the relations between the creature sacrificed and the being to whom it is offered, has secured the prolonged confidence of the peoples of the Old World, and appears again in Peru, where it cannot have been imitated from any one?
It has been asked whether the native religion of Peru rested any system of elevated morals on its fundamental principles. Gentlemen, I am persuaded that religion and morals unite together and interpenetrate each other in the higher regions of thought and life. Perhaps the most distinct result of our Christian education is the full comprehension of the fact that what is moral is religious, and that immorality cannot on any pretext be allowed as legitimately religious. But we must certainly yield to the overwhelming evidence that in the lower stages of religion this union of the two sisters is present onlyin germ. Religion, still quite selfish in its character, pursues its own way and seeks its own satisfactions independently of all moral considerations, and almost always lives in a state of separation from morality. We ought therefore to expect that in systems such as that of Peru—which have already risen much above the low level of the primitive religions, but are still far below that of the higher ones—we should find a certain religious ethic, a certain moral tendency in religion, but likewise all kinds of inconsistencies, and constant relapses towards the ancient separation of the two sisters. As a general rule, we may say that even where the Peruvian religion seems to undertake the elevation and protection of morals, it does so rather with a utilitarian and selfish view, than with any real purpose of sanctifying the heart and will.
Thus we have noted ceremonies which forcibly recal the Communion. But the great object in view was to secure to the communicants the safety and well-being that would result from their union with the Sun or his representatives. The moral idea occupies but a small place in this communion, thoughit is but right to add that the great social laws were placed under the patronage and sanction of the Sun, whose legislation the Incas were held responsible for enforcing. In the same way we find in Peru something that closely resembles baptism. From fifteen to twenty days after birth the child received its first name, after being plunged into water. But this purification had nothing to do with the ideas of sin and regeneration. It was but a form of exorcism, destined to secure the child from the evil spirits and their malign influences. Between the ages of ten and twelve, the child's definitive name was conferred. On this occasion his hair and nails were cut off, and offered to the Sun and the guardian spirits.[118]This represented the consecration of his person, but its main object was to secure him the protection of the divine power.
There was likewise a sacerdotal confession, but it was an institution of state and of police rather than a sacrament with a moral purpose. The great object was to discover all actions, whether voluntary ornot, which might bring misfortune upon the state if not expiated by the appropriate penances and rites. The father confessors of Peru were inquisitors charged with the searching out of secret faults and the exaction of their avowal. A refusal to confess might provoke severe measures. A proof of the small influence of the moral element in the whole system of inquisition may be found in the fact that the priest relied on purely fortuitous tests in deciding whether or not to give absolution. For instance, he would take a pinch of maize grains, and if the number turned out to be even, he would declare the confession good, and give absolution, otherwise he would say the penitent must have concealed something, and would make him confess again.[119]
Our conviction that the Peruvian religion had but a very elementary moral significance, receives a final confirmation from the beliefs concerning the future life.
It is clear that no very definite ideas on thispoint had become generally established. In fact, we find amongst the Peruvians at the time of the conquest the underlying conceptions of the most widely severed peoples, all mingled together. Thus the common people of Peru, like all savages, thought of the future life as a continuation, pure and simple, of the present life. This explains the custom of burying all kinds of useful and desirable objects with the dead—giving him an emigrant's outfit, in short. The worship of ancestors is easily grafted upon this conception of the life beyond the grave. These ancestors may still succour, protect and inspire their descendants. I am assured at first hand that to this very day, and in spite of the efforts of the Catholic clergy, the worship of ancestors is still widely practised by the native population. There was not the least idea of a resurrection of the body. If the corpse was preserved, especially in the case of departed Incas, it was because the Peruvians believed that the soul which had left it still retained a marked predilection for its ancient abode and liked to return to it from time to time; and also because they attributed magic virtues to the remains thuspreserved. No idea of recompense is as yet associated with this purely animistic and primitive conception of the life beyond the tomb.[120]
Amongst the higher classes, the ideas entertained on this same subject had become a little less naive. The Incas were supposed to be transported to the mansion of the Sun, their father, where they still lived together as his family. The Curacas or nobles would either follow them there, or would still live under the earth beneath the sceptre of the god of the dead, Supay, the Hades or Pluto of the Peruvian mythology. Do not identify this deity with a Satan or Ahriman of any kind. He was not a wicked, but rather a sinister god, the conception of whom could wake no joyous or even serene emotions. He was a voracious deity, of insatiable appetite. At Quito, at any rate before the conquest of the country by the Incas, a hundred children were sacrificed to him every year. There is no idea of positive suffering inflicted on the wicked under his direction. But the subterranean abode is gloomy and dismal, likethe place of shades in the Odyssey. Exceptional considerations of birth, rank or valour in war, determine the passage of chosen souls to heaven, where their lot will of course be far more brilliant and happy than that of the souls that remain in the subterranean regions. Thus the aristocratic point of view, barely modified by the high importance attributed to the warlike virtues, still dominates the ideas of a future life in ancient Peru, as in Mexico, in Polynesia and in Africa. This is a final proof that the moral element was but feebly present in the ancient Peruvian religion. For wherever a clear and definite belief in a conscious life beyond the grave is united to a sense of the religious character of morality, it is likewise held, by an obvious connection of ideas, that the lot of departed souls will depend completely upon their moral condition, without distinction of birth or rank.[121]
This Peruvian religion, then, in spite of its elevation and refinement in some respects, forcibly reminds us of the walls of its own temples, all plated with gold, but covered in with straw, and poor and unvaried in architecture. A monotonous, unformed, gloomy spirit seems to pervade the whole institution, in spite of its brilliant exterior. The air of the convent broods over it. Those thousands of functionaries who spent their lives in superintending the furniture, the dress, the work, the very cookery, of the families under their charge, and inflicting corporal chastisement on those whom they surprised in a fault, might succeed in forming a correct and regular society, drilled like the bees in a hive, might form a nation of submissive slaves, but could never make a nation ofmen; and this is the deep cause that explains the irremediable collapse of this Peruvian society under the vigorous blows of a handful of unscrupulous Spaniards. It was a skilfully constructed machine, which worked like a chronometer; but when once the mainspring was broken, all was over.
It is no part of our task to tell the story of the conversion of the natives to Roman Catholic Christianity. It was comparatively easily effected. The fall of the Incas was a mortal blow to the religious, no less than to the political, edifice in which they were the key-stone of the arch. It was evident that the Sun had been unable or unwilling to protect his children. The conqueror imposed his religion on Peru, as on Mexico, by open force; and the Spanish Inquisition, though not giving rise to such numerous and terrible spectacles in the former as in the latter country, yet carried out its work of terror and oppression there too. The result was that peculiar character of the Catholicism of the natives of Peru which strikes every traveller, and consists in a kind of timid and superstitious submission, without confidence and without zeal, associated with the obstinate preservation of customs which mount back to the former religious régime, and with memories of the golden age of the Inca rule under which their ancestors were privileged to live, but which has gone to return no more.
And now it only remains for us to draw theinferences and conclusions suggested by our examination of the ancient religions of Mexico and Peru, so closely associated with the remarkable though imperfect civilizations to which the two nations had attained.
We have not stayed to discuss the hypotheses that have so often been put forward, to attach these religions and civilizations to some immigration from the Old World. The fact is that all these attempts rest on the arbitrary selection of some few traits of resemblance, on which exclusive stress is laid, to the neglect of still more characteristic differences. The best proof that the work of affiliation has been abortive, in spite of the high authority of some of the names that have been lent to it, may be found in the fact that every possible nation of the Old World has in its turn been selected as the true parent of the Peruvians and Mexicans. The Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Buddhists of India and China, the Romans, even the Celts and the Chaldeans, have been put forward one after the other. Nay, the English themselves have been tried! There is a gratifyinglegend which brings the story of Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo into connection with the results of the shipwreck of anEnglishman, whose national name was transformed intoInga Man, which again, in conjunction withCocapac, the name of the father of the native wife whom the Englishman had taken to himself, madeInca Manco Capac! The sequel is obvious. The two fair-skinned children that sprang from this union were of course the founders of the Inca family and the state of Cuzco.[122]I need not tell you that all this will not bear a moment's examination. Everything shows that the civilizations and religions of Mexico and Peru are autochthonous, springing from the soil itself.
There is surely something very strange in this passion for localizing all origins at some single point of the globe. Why not admit that what took place there may have taken place elsewhere also, that the same concourse of events which called forth such and such a result in a certain given place may havebeen reproduced somewhere else, and consequently given rise to identical or closely analogous results there too? Does not our own experience teach us that the contact of a civilized with an uncivilized people is not enough in itself to ensure the adoption by the latter of the civilization that is brought to it? It is the exception, not the rule, for the Red-skin, the Kafir, the Australian or the Papuan, to become civilized. Civilization can only be handed on if the invaded race possesses a special disposition and aptitude for civilized life; and this aptitude may have existed to such a degree as to be capable of independent development in the New-World as we know it did in the Old; and if there were centres of such nascent civilization in Central America, in Mexico and in Peru, it is absolutely superfluous to search elsewhere than in America itself for the origins of American civilization.
But the mistake into which so many historians and travellers have fallen is explained, to a certain extent, by the fact that, in examining the beliefs, the monuments and the customs of Peru and Mexico, we come upon phenomena at every moment whichare identical with or analogous to something we have observed in the Old World. The temples, with their successive terraces, remind us of ancient Chaldea, and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. The convents recal the Indian and Chinese Buddhism. The cruel and bloody sacrifices and the preponderance of the Sun-worship have a Semitic tinge. There are myths and curious resemblances of words which wake thoughts of Hellenic civilization; and sacerdotal castes and sacrificial rites which bring us round to the Celts! Nay, are there not even beliefs as to the arrival or return of a deity who will restore order and avenge outraged justice, round which there breathes a kind of Messianic air? So much so, indeed, that I must add to the list of supposed ancestors of American civilization the ten lost tribes of Israel, who must have fled from the yoke of their Ninevite oppressors right across Asia into America! The partizans of this ingenious hypothesis have, it is true, forgotten to inquire how far these Israelites of the North, whose enthusiasm for the house of Judah was, to say the least of it, decidedly subdued, had ever heard of the Messianic hopes at all!
The real result of all these wild speculations, however, is to bring out the fact very clearly, that in the native religions of Mexico, of Central America and of Peru, we find a number of traits united which are scattered amongst the most celebrated religions of our own ancient world; so that this new and well-defined region gives us a precious opportunity of testing the value of the explanations of religious ideas and practices deduced from the comparative study of religions.
Let us take the question of sacrifice, for instance. In both religions sacrifice is frequent, often cruel,—in Mexico even frightful. But it is easy to trace the original idea that inspired it. It is by no means the sense of guilt, or the idea that the culprit, terrified by the account that he must render to the divine justice, can transfer to a victim the penalty he has himself incurred. It is simply the idea that by offering the gods the things they like—that is to say, whatever will satisfy and gratify their senses—it is possible to secure their goodwill, their protection and their favour, while at the same time disarming their wrath, if need be, and appeasingtheir dangerous appetites. It is only at a later stage that the extreme importance attributed to this rite, the very essence of the worship rendered to the gods, leads to the association of mystic and ultimately of moral ideas with the circumstance of the pain inseparably connected with sacrifice. And when this stage is reached, men will either refine upon the suffering with frantic intensity, as they did in Mexico, or, if the sentiment of humanity has made itself felt in religion, as was the case in Peru and in the special worship of Quetzalcoatl, they will try to restrain the number and mitigate the horror of the human sacrifices, while still inflexibly maintaining the principle they involve.
Again: there is not the smallest trace of an earlier monotheism preceding the polytheism of either the one or the other nation. On the other hand, we may trace in both alike three stages of religious faith superimposed, so to speak, one upon the other. At the bottom of all still lies the religion that we find to-day amongst peoples that are strangers to all civilization. It is an incoherent and confused jumble of nature-worshipand of animism or the worship of spirits, but especially the latter; for the primitive nature-worship has been developed, enlarged and more or less organized, on a higher level, whereas animism has remained what it was. The spirits of nature, which may often be anonymous—spirits of forests, of plants, of rocks, of waters, of animals, generally with the addition of the spirits of ancestors—make up a confused and inorganic mass that may assume almost any form. Fetichism is not the base, as it has been called, but the consequence and application of this animistic view. It is enough to secure adoration for any worthless object, natural or artificial, if it strikes the ignorant imagination forcibly enough to induce the belief that it is the residence of a spirit. Magic, founded on the pretension of certain individuals to stand in special relations with the spirits, equips the priesthood of this lowest stage. But above this, through the action of the higher minds amongst the people, nature-worship develops itself into the adoration of the most important, most general and most imposing phenomena of nature. In the tropical countries, at once warm and fertile,it is the Sun that reigns supreme, though not without leaving a very exalted place to other phenomena, such as wind, rain, vegetation and so on, personified as so many special deities. But in all this there is no indication of an antecedent and primitive monotheism. It is quite true that each one of these deities receives in his turn epithets which seem to attribute omnipotence to him and to make him the sole creator. But this is the case in all polytheistic systems, whether in Greece, Persia, and India, or in Mexico and Peru. It only proves that when man worships, he never limits the homage he renders to the object of his adoration; but if he is a polytheist, he has no scruple in attributing the same omnipotence to each of his gods in turn. It is much the same with the worthy curés in our rural districts, whose sermons systematically exalt the saint of the day, whoever he may be, to the chief place in Paradise! And here in Mexico and in Peru, as in Greece and in India, we observe the ever growing tendency towardsanthropomorphism, transforming into men, of enormous strength, stature and power, those natural phenomena which at the earlier stage were ratherassimilated to animals. Uitzilopochtli still bears the traces of his ancient nature as a humming-bird, and Tezcatlipoca of the time when he was no more than a celestial tapir. Their cultus, like their functions in the order of nature, must be regular and subject to fixed rules. And thus the priesthood, organized and regulated in its turn, emerges from the earlier stage of sorcery, and becomes a great institution to protect and foster the nascent civilization. The third stage was not actually reached in ancient Mexico and Peru. One can but divine its beginnings in the mysterious priesthood of Quetzalcoatl, or trace it in the traditions of the philosopher king of Tezcuco, and the sceptical Incas of whom Garcilasso and others tell us. In such traits as these we may discover a certain dissatisfaction with the established polytheism, striving to raise itself higher in the direction of a spiritual monotheism. But this tendency is obviously the last term of the evolution, and in no sense its first.