LECTURE II.

THE DEITIES AND MYTHS OF MEXICO.

To begin with, we must note that the ancient Central-American cultus of the Sun and Moon, considered as the two supreme deities, was by no means renounced by the Aztecs. Ometecutli (i.e. twice Lord) and Omecihuatl (twice Lady), or in other words supreme Lord and Lady, are the designations under which they are always indicated in the first rank in the religious formulæ. All the Mexicans called themselves "children of the Sun," and greeted him every morning with hymns and with trumpet peals, accompanied with offerings. Four times by day and four times by night, priests who were attached to the various temples addressed their devotions to him. And yet he had no temple specially consecrated to him. The fact was that all temples were really his, much as in our own Christian civilization all the churches are raised in honour of God, though particular designations are severally given to them. The Sun was the teotl (i.e. the god) par excellence. I am informed that to this very day the inhabitants of secluded parts of Mexico, as they go to mass, throw a kiss to the sun before entering the church.

Notwithstanding all this, we have to observe that, by an inconsistency which again has its analogies in other religions, the cultus of the supreme deity and his consort was pretty much effaced in the popular devotions and practices by that of divinities who were perhaps less august, and in some cases were even derived from the substance of the supreme deity himself, but in any case seemed to stand nearer to humanity than he did. More especially, the national deities of the Aztecs, the guardians of their empire, whose worship they instituted wherever their arms had triumphed, practically took the first place. It is with these national deities that we are now to make acquaintance, and we cannot do better than begin with the two great deities of the city of Mexico, whose colossal statues were enthroned on its principal temple.

But first we must form some notion of what a Mexican temple was.

The word "temple," if held to imply an enclosed and covered building, is very improperly applied to the kind of edifice in question. Indeed, a Mexican temple (and the same may be said of most of the sanctuaries of Central America) was essentially a gigantic altar, of pyramidal form, built in several stages, contracting as they approached the summit. The number of these retreating stories or terraces might vary. There were never less than three, but there might be as many as five or six, and in Tezcuco some of these quasi-pyramids even numbered nine. The one that towered over all the rest in the city of Mexico was built in five stages. It measured, at its base, about three hundred and seventy-five feet in length and three hundred in width, and was over eighty feet high. At a certain point in each terrace was the stair that sloped across the side of the pyramid to the terrace above; but the successive ascents were so arranged that it was necessary to make the complete circuit of the edifice in order to mount from one stage to another, and consequently the grand processions to which the Mexicans were so much devoted must have encircled the whole edifice from top to bottom, like a huge living serpent, before the van could reach the broad platform at the top, and this must have added not a little to the picturesque effect of these religious ceremonies. Such an erection was called a teocalli or "abode of the gods." The great teocalli of Mexico commanded the four chief roads that parted from its base to unite the capital to all the countries beneath the sceptre of its rulers. It was the palladium of the empire, and, as at Jerusalem, it was the last refuge of the defenders of the national independence.

The teocalli which Fernando Cortes and his companions saw at Mexico, and which the conqueror razed to the ground, to replace it by a Catholic church, was not of any great antiquity. It had been constructed thirty-four years before, in the place of another much smaller one that dated from the time when the Aztecs were but an insignificant tribe; and it seems that frightful human hecatombs had ensanguined the foundations of this more recent teocalli. Some authorities speak of seventy-two or eighty thousand victims, while more moderate calculations reduce the number to twenty thousand, which is surely terrible enough. In front of the temple there stretched a spacious court some twelve hundred feet square. All around were smaller buildings, which served as habitations for the priests, and store-houses for the apparatus of worship, as well as arsenals, oratories for the sovereign and the grandees of the empire, chapels for the inferior deities and so on. Amongst these buildings was the temple in which, as I have said, the gods of the conquered peoples were literally imprisoned. In another the Spaniards could count a hundred and thirty-six thousand symmetrically-piled skulls. They were the skulls of all the victims that had been sacrificed since the foundation of the sanctuary. And, by a contrast no less than monstrous, side by side with this monument of the most atrocious barbarism there were halls devoted to the care of the poor and sick, who were tended gratuitously by priests.[7] What a tissue of contradictions is man!

But the Aztec religion does not allow us to dwell upon the note of tenderness. In the centre of the broad platform at the summit stood the stone of sacrifices, a monolith about three feet high, slightly ridged on the surface. Upon this stone the victim was stretched supine, and while sundry subordinate priests held his head, arms and feet, the sacrificing pontiff raised a heavy knife, laid open his bosom with one terrific blow, and tore out his heart to offer it all bleeding and palpitating to the deity in whose honour the sacrifice was performed. And here you will recognize that idea, so widely spread in the two Americas, and indeed almost everywhere amongst uncivilized peoples, that the heart is the epitome, so to speak, of the individual—his soul in some sense—so that to appropriate his heart is to appropriate his whole being.

Finally, there rose on the same platform a kind of chapel in which were enthroned the two chief deities of the Aztecs, Uitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca.[8] And here I will ask you to accompany Captain Bernal Diaz in the retinue of his chief, Fernando Cortes, to whom the king Montezuma himself had seen fit to do the honours of his "cathedral." For, as you are aware, Montezuma, divided between a rash confidence and certain apprehensions which I shall presently explain, received Cortes for a considerable time with the utmost distinction, lodged him in one of his palaces, and did everything in the world to please him. This, then, is the narrative of Bernal Diaz:[9]

"Montezuma invited us to enter a little tower, where in a kind of chamber, or hall, stood what appeared like two altars covered with rich embroidery." (What Bernal Diaz compared to altars were the two Teoicpalli (or seats of the gods), which were wooden pedestals, painted azure blue and bearing a serpent's head at each corner).... "The first [idol], placed on the right, we were told represented Huichilobos, their god of war" (this was as near as Bernal Diaz could get to Uitzilopochtli), "with his face and countenance very broad, his eyes monstrous and terrible; all his body was covered with jewels, gold and pearls of various sizes.... His body was girt with things like great serpents, made with gold and precious stones, and in one hand he held a bow, and arrows in the other. And another little idol who stood by him, and, as they said, was his page, carried a short lance for him, and a very rich shield of gold and jewels. And Huichilobos had his neck hung round with faces of Indians, and what seemed to be the hearts of these same Indians, made of gold, or some of them of silver, covered with blue gems; and there stood some brasiers there, containing incense made with copal and the hearts of three Indians who had been slain that same day; and they were burning, and with the smoke and incense they had made that sacrifice to him; and all the walls of this oratory were so bathed and blackened with cakes of blood, as was the very ground itself, that the whole exhaled a very foul odour.

"Carrying our eyes to the left we perceived another great mass, as high as Huichilobos. Its face was like a bear's, and its shining eyes were made of mirrors called Tezcat. Its body was covered with rich gems like that of Huichilobos, for they said that they were brothers. And this Tescatepuca" (the mutilated form under which Bernal Diaz presents Tezcatlipoca) "was the god of hell" (this is another mistake, for Tezcatlipoca was a celestial deity).... "His body was surrounded with figures like little imps, with tails like serpents; and the walls were so caked and the ground so saturated with blood, that the slaughterhouses of Castile do not exhale such a stench; and indeed we saw the hearts of five victims who had been slaughtered that same day.... And since everything smelt of the shambles, we were impatient to escape from the foul odour and yet fouler sight."

II.

Such was the impression made upon a Spanish soldier and a good Catholic by the sight of the two chief deities of the Mexican people. To him they were simply two abominable inventions of Satan. Let us try to go a little further below the surface.

Uitzilopochtli signifies Humming-bird to the left, from Uizilin (Humming-bird), and opochtli (to the left). The latter part of the name is probably due to the position we have just seen noticed to the left of the other great deity, Tezcatlipoca. But why Humming-bird? What can there be in common between this graceful little creature and the monstrous idol of the Aztecs? The answer is given by the American mythology, in which the Humming-bird is a divine being, the messenger of the Sun. In the Aztec language it is often called the "sunbeam" or the "sun's hair." This charming little bird, with the purple, gold and topaz sheen of its lovely plumage, as it flits amongst the flowers like a butterfly, darts out its long tongue before it to extract their juices, with a burring of its wings like the humming of bees, whence it derives its English name. Moreover, it is extremely courageous, and will engage with far larger birds than itself in defence of its nest. In the northern regions of Mexico, the humming-bird is the messenger of spring, as the swallow is with us. At the beginning of May, after a cold and dry season that has parched the soil and blighted all verdure, the atmosphere becomes pregnant with rain, the sun regains his power, and a marvellous transformation sets in. The land arrays itself, before the very eyes, with verdure and flowers, the air is filled with perfumes, the maize comes to a head, and hosts of humming-birds appear, as if to announce that the fair season has returned. We may lay it down as certain that the humming-bird was the object of a religious cultus amongst the earliest Aztecs, as the divine messenger of the Spring, like the wren amongst our own peasantry, the plover amongst the Latins, and the crow amongst many tribes of the Red-skins. It was the emissary of the Sun.

It was in this capacity, and under the law of anthropomorphism to which all the Mexican deities were subject, that the divine humming-bird, as a revealing god, the protector of the Aztec nation, took the human form more and more completely in the religious consciousness of his worshippers. And indeed the Mexican mythology gives form to this idea that the divine humming-bird (of which those on earth were but the relatives or little brothers) was a celestial man like an Aztec of the first rank, in the following legend of his incarnation.

Near to Coatepec, that is to say the Mountain of Serpents,[10] lived the pious widow Coatlicue or Coatlantona (the ultimate meaning of which is "female serpent"). One day, as she was going to the temple to worship the Sun, she saw a little tuft of brilliantly coloured feathers fall at her feet. She picked it up and placed it in her bosom to present as an offering to the Sun. But when she was about to draw it forth, she knew not what had come upon her. Soon afterwards she perceived that she was about to become a mother. Her children were so enraged that they determined to kill her, but a voice from her womb cried out to her, "Mother, have no fear, for I will save thee, to thy great honour and my own great glory." And in fact Coatlicue's children failed in their murderous attempt. In due time Uitzilopochtli was born, grasping his shield and lance, with a plume of feathers shaped like a bird's beak on his head, with humming-birds' feathers on his left leg, and his face, arms and legs barred with blue. Endowed from his birth with extraordinary strength, while still an infant he put to death those who had attempted to slay his mother, together with all who had taken their part. He gave her everything he could take from them; and after accomplishing mighty feats on behalf of the Aztecs, whom he had taken under his protection, he re-ascended to heaven, bearing his mother with him, and making her henceforth the goddess of flowers.[11]

You will be struck by the analogy between this myth and more than one Greek counterpart. There is the same method of reducing to the conditions of human life, and concentrating at a single point of time and space, a permanent or regularly recurrent and periodic natural phenomenon. Uitzilopochtli, the humming-bird, has come from the Sun with the purpose of making himself man, and he has therefore taken flesh in an Aztec woman, Coatlicue, the serpent, who is no other than the spring florescence, and therefore the Mexican Flora. It is not only amongst the Mexicans that the creeping progress of the spring vegetation, stretching along the ground towards the North, has suggested the idea of a divine serpent crawling over the earth. The Athenian myth of Erichthonius is a conception of the same order. The celestial humming-bird, then, offspring of the Sun, valiant and warlike from the day of his birth, champion of his mother, plundering and ever victorious, is the symbol instinctively seized on by the Aztec people; for it, too, had sprung from humble beginnings, had been despised and menaced by its neighbours, and had grown so marvellously in power and in wealth as to have become the invincible lord of Anahuac. Uitzilopochtli had grown with the Aztec people. He bears, amongst other surnames, that of Mextli, the warrior, whence the name of Mexico. He protects his people and ever extends the boundaries of its empire. And thus, in spite of his bearing the name of a little bird, his statue as an incarnate deity had become colossal. Yet the Aztecs did not lose the memory of his original minuteness of stature. Did you observe, in the account given by Bernal Diaz, that there stood at the feet of the huge idol another quite small one, that served, according to the Spanish Captain, as his page? This was the Uitziton, or "little humming-bird," called also the Paynalton, or the "little quick one," whose image was borne by a priest at the head of the soldiers as they charged the enemy. On the day of his festival, too, he was borne at full speed along the streets of the city. He was, therefore, the diminutive Uitzilopochtli, or, more correctly speaking, the Uitzilopochtli of the early days, the portable idol of the still wandering tribe; and in fidelity to those memories, as well as to preserve the warlike rite to the efficacy of which they attached so much value, the Aztecs had kept the small statue by the side of the great one.

To sum up: Uitzilopochtli was a derivative form or determination of the Sun, and specifically of the Sun of the fair season. He had three great annual festivals. The first fell in May, at the moment of the return of the flowering vegetation. The second was celebrated in August, when the favourable season unfolded all its beauty. The third coincided with our month of December. It was the beginning of the cold and dry season. On the day of this third festival they made a statue in Uitzilopochtli's likeness, out of dough concocted with the blood of sacrificed infants, and, after all kinds of ceremonies, a priest pierced the statue with an arrow. Uitzilopochtli would die with the verdure, the flowers and all the beauteous adornments of spring and summer. But, like Adonis, like Osiris, like Atys, and so many other solar deities, he only died to live and to return again.[12]

It was now his brother Tezcatlipoca who took the direction of the world. His name signifies "Shining Mirror." As the Sun of the cold and sterile season, he turned his impassive glance upon all the world, or gazed into the mirror of polished crystal that he held in his hand, in which all the actions of men were reflected. He was a stern god of judgment, with whose being ideas of moral retribution were associated. He was therefore much dreaded. Up to a certain point he reminds us of the Vedic Varuna. His statue was made of dark obsidian rock, and his face recalled that of the bear or tapir. Suspended to his hair, which was plaited into a tail and enclosed in a golden net, there hung an ear, which was likewise made of gold, towards which there mounted flocks of smoke in the form of tongues. These were the prayers and supplications of mortals. Maladies, famines and death, were the manifestations of Tezcatlipoca's justice. Dry as the season over which he presided, he was not easily moved. And yet he was not absolutely inexorable. The ardent prayers, the sacrifices and the supplications of his priests might avert the strokes of his wrath. But in spite of all, he was pre-eminently the god of austere law. And this is why he was regarded as the civilizing and organizing deity of the Aztecs. It was he who had established the laws that governed the people and who watched over their observance. In this capacity he made frequent journeys of inspection, like an invisible prefect of police, through the city of Mexico, to see what was going on there. Stone seats had been erected in the streets for him to rest upon on these occasions, and no mortal would have dared to occupy them. At the same time a terrible and cruel subtlety in the means he employed to accomplish his ends was attributed to him; and the legend about him, which is far less brilliant than that of his brother Uitzilopochtli, led several Europeans to believe that he was simply an ancient magician who had spread terror around him by his sorceries. All this we see exemplified in his conflicts with a third great deity whom we shall next describe. In any case we may define Tezcatlipoca as another determination of the Sun, and specifically of the winter Sun of the cold, dry, sterile season.[13]

The third great deity is Quetzalcoatl, that is to say "the feathered serpent," or "the serpent-bird;" and it is specially noteworthy, in connection with the elevated rank which he occupied in the Mexican pantheon, that he was not an Aztec deity, but one of the ancient gods of the invaded country. He was in fact a Toltec deity, and we recognize in his name, as well as in the special notes in the legend concerning him, that god of the wind whom we know already in Central America under the varying names of Cuculcan, Hurakan, Gucumatz, Votan and so forth. He is almost always a serpent, and a serpent with feathers. His temple at Mexico departed altogether from the pyramidal type that we have described. It was dome-shaped and covered. The entrance was formed by a great serpent-mouth, wide open and showing its fangs, so that the Spaniards thought it represented a gate of hell. Quetzalcoatl's priests were clothed in white, whereas the ordinary garb of the Mexican priests was black. There was something mysterious and occult about the priesthood of this deity, as though it were possessed of divine secrets or promises, the importance of which it would be dangerous to undervalue. A special aversion to human sacrifice, and especially to the frightful abuse of the practice amongst the Aztecs, was attributed to this god and his priests, in passive protest, as it were, against the sanguinary rites to which the Aztecs attributed the prosperity of their empire.

The legend of Quetzalcoatl, as the Aztecs transmitted it to the Spaniards, is a motley concatenation of euhemerized myths. Its historical basis is the continuous retreat of the Toltecs before the northern invaders, with their god Tezcatlipoca. This latter deity becomes a magician, cunning and malicious enough to get the better of the gentle Quetzalcoatl on every occasion. I regret that time will not allow me to tell in detail of the combat between Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl. The latter was a sovereign who lived long ago at Tulla, the northern focus of Toltec civilization. Under his sceptre men lived in great happiness and enjoyed abundance of everything. He had taught them agriculture, the use of the metals, the art of cutting stone, the means of fixing the calendar; and being opposed to the sacrifice of human victims—note this—he had advised their replacement by the drawing of blood from the tongue, the lips, the chest, the legs, &c. Tezcatlipoca succeeded by his enchantments in destroying this rule of peace and prosperity, and forced Quetzalcoatl to quit Tulla, which thereupon fell in ruins. He then pursued him into Cholula, the ancient sacred city of the Toltecs, in which he had sought refuge, and in which he had again made happiness and abundance reign. Finally, he forced him to quit the continent altogether, and embark in a mysterious vessel not far from Vera Cruz, near to the very spot where Cortes disembarked. Since then Quetzalcoatl had disappeared; "But wait!" said his priests, "for he will return." This expectation of Quetzalcoatl's return furnishes a kind of parallel to the Messianic hope, or more closely yet to the early Christian expectation of the parousia or "second coming" of the Christ. For when he returned, it would be to punish his enemies, to chastise the wicked, the oppressors and the tyrants. And that is why the Aztecs dreaded his return, and why they had not dared to proscribe his cultus, but, on the contrary, recognized it and carried it on. And if you would know the real secret of the success of Fernando Cortes in his wild enterprize—for, after all, the Mexican sovereign could easily have crushed him and his handful of men, by making a hecatomb of them before they had had time to entrench themselves and make allies—you will find it in the fact that Montezuma, whose conscience was oppressed with more crimes than one, had a very lively dread of Quetzalcoatl's return; and when he was informed that at the very point where the dreaded god had embarked, to disappear in the unknown East, strange and terrible beings had been seen to disembark, bearing with them fragments of thunderbolts, in tubes that they could discharge whenever they would—some of them having two heads and six legs, swifter of foot than the fleetest men—Montezuma could not doubt that—it was Quetzalcoatl returning, and instead of sending his troops against Cortes, he preferred to negotiate with him, to allow him to approach, and to receive him in his own palace. And although doubts soon asserted themselves in his mind, yet he long retained, perhaps even to the last, a superstitious dread of Cortes, that enabled the latter to secure a complete ascendancy over him. This, I repeat, was the secret of the bold Spaniard's success; nor can we ever understand the matter rightly unless we take into consideration the significance of this worship of Quetzalcoatl that the Aztecs had continued to respect, though all the while flattering themselves that their own god, Tezcatlipoca, would be able once more to protect them against his ancient adversary. Years after the conquest, Father Sahagun had still to answer the question of the natives, who asked him what he knew of the country of Quetzalcoatl.[14]

What, then, was the fundamental significance of this feathered Serpent that so pre-occupied the religious consciousness of the Aztecs?

He was not the Sun. The Sun does not disappear in the East. He was a god of the wind, as Father Sahagun perfectly well understood, but of that wind in particular that brings over the parched land of Mexico the tepid and fertilizing exhalations of the Atlantic. And this is why Tezcatlipoca, the god of the cold and dry season, rather than Uitzilopochtli, is his personal enemy. It is towards the end of the dry season that the fertilizing showers begin to fall on the eastern shores, and little by little to reach the higher lands of the interior. The flying Serpent, then, the wind that comes like a huge bird upon the air, bringing life and abundance with it, is a benevolent deity who spreads prosperity wherever he goes. But he does not always breathe over the land, and does not carry his blessed moisture everywhere. Tezcatlipoca appears. The lofty plateaux of Tulla, of Mexico and of Cholula, are the first victims of his desolating force. Quetzalcoatl withdraws ever further and further to the East, and at last disappears in the great ocean.

Such is the natural basis of the myth of Quetzalcoatl, and the justification of my remark that we find in him the pendant of those deities, serpents and birds in one, who were adored in Central America, and who answered, like Quetzalcoatl, to the idea of the Atlantic wind. He was, in truth, the ancient deity that the Nahuas or Mayas of the civilized immigrations brought with them when they settled in Anahuac and still further North. Like all the other gods of these regions, Quetzalcoatl had assumed the human shape more and more completely. We still possess, especially in the Trocadero Museum at Paris, great blocks of stone on which he is represented as a serpent covered with feathers, coiled up and sleeping till the time comes for him to wake. But there are also statues of him in human form, save that his body is surmounted by a bird's head, with the tongue projected. Now in the Mexican hieroglyphie this bird's head, with the tongue put out, is no other than the symbol of the wind. Hence, too, his names of Tohil "the hummer" or "the whisperer," Ehecatl "the breeze," Nauihehecatl "the lord of the four winds," &c. The naturalistic meaning of Quetzalcoatl, then, cannot admit of the smallest doubt.

It is probably to the more gentle and humane religious tendency which was kept alive by the priesthood of this deity, that we must attribute the attempted reform of the king of Tezcuco, Netzalhuatcoyotl (the fasting coyote), who has been called the Mexican Solomon. He was a poet and philosopher as well as king, and had no love either of idolatry or of sanguinary sacrifices. He had a great pyramidal teocalli of nine stages erected in his capital for the worship of the god of heaven, to whom he brought no offerings except flowers and perfumes. He died in 1472, and, as far as we can see, his reformation made no progress. The ever-increasing preponderance of the Aztecs was as unfavourable as possible to this humane and spiritual tendency in religion.[15] Yet one loves to dwell upon the fact, that even in the midst of a religion steeped in blood, a protest was inspired by the sentiment of humanity, linked, as it should always be, with the progress of religious thought.

III.

We must now proceed with our review of the Mexican deities, but I must be content with indicating the most important amongst them; for without admitting, with Gomara—who registered many names and epithets belonging to one and the same divinity as indicating so many distinct beings—that their number rose to two thousand, we find that the most moderate estimate of the historians raises them to two hundred and sixty. We shall confine ourselves, then, to the most significant.

The importance of rain in the regions of Mexico, so marked in the myths we have already considered, prepares us to find amongst the great gods the figure of Tlaloc, whose name signifies "the nourisher," and who was the god of rain. He was believed to reside in the mountains, whence he sent the clouds. He was also the god of fecundity. Lightning and thunder were amongst his attributes, and his character was no more amiable than that of the Mexican deities in general. His cultus was extremely cruel. Numbers of children were sacrificed to him. His statues were cut in a greenish white stone, of the colour of water. In one hand he held a sceptre, the symbol of lightning; in the other, a thunderbolt. He was a cyclops; that is to say, he had but one eye, which shows that he must be ultimately identified as an ancient personification of the rainy sky, whose one eye is the sun. His huge mouth, garnished with crimson teeth, was always open, to signify his greed and his sanguinary tastes. His wife was Chalchihuitlicue, "the lady Chalchihuit," whose name is identical with that of a soft green jade stone that was much valued in Mexico. Her numerous offspring, the Tlalocs, probably represent the clouds. Side by side with the hideous sacrifices of which Tlaloc's festival was the occasion, we may note the grotesque ceremony in which his priests flung themselves pell-mell into a pond, imitating the action and the note of frogs. This is but one of a thousand proofs that in the rites intended to conciliate the nature-gods, it was thought well to reproduce in mimicry the actions of those creatures who were supposed to be their favourites or chosen servants. The frogs were manifestly loved by the god of the waters, and to secure his good graces his priests, as was but natural, transformed themselves into frogs likewise. It was with this cultus especially that the symbol of the Mexican cross was connected, as indicating the four points of the horizon from which the wind might blow.

Centeotl was another great deity, a kind of Mexican Ceres or Demeter. She was the goddess of Agriculture, and very specially of maize. Indeed, her name signifies "maize-goddess," being derived from centli (maize) and teotl (divine being). Sometimes, however, inasmuch as this goddess had a son who bore the same name as herself, Centeotl stands for a male deity. The female deity is often represented with a child in her arms, like a Madonna. This child, who is no other than the maize itself, grows up, becomes an adult god, and is the masculine Centeotl. The feminine Centeotl, moreover, bears many other names, such as Tonantzin (our revered mother), Cihuatcoatl (lady serpent), and very often Toci or Tocitzin (our grandmother). She was sometimes represented in the form of a frog, the symbol of the moistened earth, with a host of mouths or breasts on her body. She had also a daughter, Xilonen, the young maize-ear, corresponding to the Persephone or Kore of the Greeks. Her face was painted yellow, the colour of the maize. Her character, at least amongst the Aztecs, had nothing idyllic about it, and we shall have to return presently to the frightful sacrifices which were celebrated in her honour.

Next comes the god of Fire, Xiuhtecutli (the Lord Fire), a very ancient deity, as we see by one of his many surnames, Huehueteotl (the old god). He is represented naked, with his chin blackened, with a head-dress of green feathers, carrying on his back a kind of serpent with yellow feathers, thus combining the different fire colours. And inasmuch as he looked across a disk of gold, called "the looking-plate," we may ask whether his primitive significance was not very closely allied to that of Tezcatlipoca, the shining mirror of the cold season. Sacrifice was offered to him daily. In every house the first libation and the first morsel of bread were consecrated to him. And finally, as an instance of the astounding resemblance that is forced upon our attention between the religious development of the Old World and that of the New, only conceive that in Mexico, as in ancient Iran and other countries of Asia and Europe, the fire in every house must be extinguished on a certain day in every year, and the priest of Xiuhtecutli kindled fire anew by friction before the statue of his god. You are aware that this rite, with which so many customs and superstitions are connected, rests on the idea that Fire is a divine being, of celestial and pure origin, which is shut up in the wood, and which is contaminated in the long run by contact with men and with human affairs. Hence it follows that in order for it to retain its virtues, to continue to act as a purifier and to spread its blessings amongst men, it must be brought down anew, from time to time, from its divine source.[16]

The Aztecs also had a Venus, a goddess of Love, who bore the name of Tlazolteotl (the goddess of Sensuality).[17] At Tlascala she was known by the more elegant name of Xochiquetzal (the flowery plume). She lived in heaven, in a beautiful garden, spinning and embroidering, surrounded by dwarfs and buffoons, whom she kept for her amusement. We hear of a battle of the gods of which she was the object. Though the wife of Tlaloc, she was loved and carried off by Tezcatlipoca. This probably gives us the clue to her mythic origin. She must have been the aquatic vegetation of the marsh lands, possessed by the god of waters, till the sun dries her up and she disappears. The legend about her is not very edifying. It was she—to mention only a single feat—who prevailed over the pious hermit Yappan, when he had victoriously resisted all other temptations. After his fall he was changed into a scorpion; and that is why the scorpion, full of wrath at the memory of his fall and fleeing the daylight, is so poisonous and lives hidden under stones.[18]

We have still to mention Mixcoatl, the cloud-serpent, whose name survives to our day as the designation of water-spouts in Mexico, and who was specially worshipped by the still almost savage populations of the secluded mountain districts,—Omacatl, "the double reed," a kind of Momus, the god of good cheer, who may very well be a secondary form of Tlaloc, and who avenged himself, when defrauded of due homage, by interspersing hairs and other disagreeable objects amongst the viands,—Ixtlilton, "the brown," a sort of Esculapius, the healing god, whose priest concocted a blackish liquid that passed as an efficacious remedy for every kind of disease,—Yacatecutli, "the lord guide," the god of travellers and of commerce, whose ordinary symbol was the stick with a carved handle carried by the Mexicans when on a journey, who was sedulously worshipped by the commercial and middle classes of Mexico, and in connection with whom we may note that every Mexican, when travelling, would be careful to fix his stick in the ground every evening and pay his respectful devotions to it,[19]—and, finally, Xipe, "the bald," or "the flayed," the god of goldsmiths, probably another form of Uitzilopochtli (whose festival coincided with his), deriving his name apparently from the polishing process to which gold (no doubt regarded as belonging to the substance of the sun) had to undergo to give it the required brilliance, and to whose hideous cultus we shall have to return in our next Lecture.

I must now be brief, and will only speak further of the Tepitoton, that is to say, the "little tiny ones," minute domestic idols, the number of which was incalculable. They insensibly lower to the level of animism and fetishism that religion which, as we have seen, bears comparison in its grander aspects with the most renowned mythologies of the ancient world. I must, however, allow myself a few words on the god Mictlan, the Mexican Hades or Pluto. His name properly signifies "region of the North;" but inasmuch as the North was regarded as the country of mist, of barrenness and of death, his name easily passed into the designation of the subterranean country of the dead. The Germanic Helle has a similar history, for it was first localized in the wintry North and then carried underground. Mictlan, like Hades, was used as a name alike for the sojourn and for the god of the dead. This deity had a consort who bore divers names, and he also had at his command a number of genii or servants, called Tzitzimitles, a sort of malicious demons held in great dread by the living. Of course both Mictlan and his wives are always represented under a hideous aspect, with huge open mouths, or rather jaws, often in the act of devouring an infant.[20]

At last we have done! In the next Lecture we shall penetrate to the very heart of this singular religion, as we discuss its terrible sacrifices, its institutions, and its doctrines concerning this world and the life to come. And here, again, we shall find cause for amazement in the striking analogies it presents to the rites and institutions of other religions much nearer home. Meanwhile, observe that in examining the purely mythological portion of the subject which we have passed in review to-day, we have seen that there is not a single law manifested by the mythologies of the ancient world, which had not its parallel manifestations in Mexico before it was discovered by the Europeans. The great gods, derived from a dramatized nature—animism, with the fetishism that springs from it, occupying the basement, if I may so express myself, beneath these mythological conceptions—in the midst of all a tendency manifested from time to time towards a purer and more spiritual conception of the adorable Being—all re-appears and all is combined in Mexico, even down to something like an incarnation, and the hope of the coming of the god of justice and of goodness who will restore all things. Indeed, I know not where else one could look for so complete a résumé of what has constituted in all places, now the smallness and wretchedness, now the grandeur and nobleness, of that incomprehensible and irresistible factor of human nature which we call religion. The "eternally religious" element in man had stamped its mark upon the unknown Mexico as upon all other lands; and when at last it was discovered, evidence might have been found, had men been able to appreciate it, that there too, however frightfully misinterpreted, the Divine breath had been felt.

It is the spiritually-minded who must learn the art of discerning the spirit wherever it reveals itself; and when the horrors rise up before us of which religion has more than once in the course of history been the cause or the pretext, and we are almost tempted to ask whether this attribute of human nature has really worked more good than ill in the destinies of our race, we may remember that the same question might be asked of all the proudest attributes of our humanity. Take polity or the art of governing human societies. To what monstrous aberrations has it not given birth! Take science. Through what lamentable and woful errors has it not pursued its way! Take art. How gross were its beginnings, and how often has it served, not to elevate man, but to stimulate his vilest and most degrading passions! Yet, who would wish to live without government, science or art?

Let us apply the same test to religion. The horrors it has caused cannot weigh against the final and overmastering good which it produces; and its annals, too often written in blood, should teach us how to guide it, how to purify it from all that corrupts and debases it. We shall see at the close of our Lectures what that directing, normalizing, purifying principle is that must hold the helm of religion and guide it in its evolution. Meanwhile, let no imperfection, no repulsiveness—nay, no atrocity even—blind us to the ideal value of what we have been considering, any more than we should allow the disasters that spring from the use of fire to make us cease to rank it amongst the great blessings of our earthly life.

LECTURE III.

THE SACRIFICES, SACERDOTAL AND MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS, ESCHATOLOGY AND COSMOGONY OF MEXICO.

To-day we are to complete the internal study of the Mexican religion, by dealing with its sacrifices, its institutions, and its eschatological and cosmogonical doctrines. We begin with those sacrifices of which I have already spoken as so numerous and so horrible.

I.

We have some little difficulty in our times, familiar as we are with spiritual conceptions of God and the divine purposes, in comprehending the extreme importance which sacrifices, offerings, gifts to the divine being, assumed in the eyes of peoples who were still enveloped in the darkness of polytheism and idolatry. And perhaps we may find it more difficult yet to realize the primitive object and intention of these sacrifices. There can be no doubt that they were originally suggested by the idea that the divine being, whatever it may have been—whether a natural object, an animal, or a creature analogous to man—liked what we like, was pleased with what pleases us, and had the same tastes and the same proclivities as ours. This is the fundamental idea that urged the polytheistic peoples along the path of religious anthropomorphism.

This principle once established, and the object being to secure the goodwill and the protection of the divine beings, what could be more natural than to offer them the things in which men themselves took pleasure, such as viands, drinks, perfumes, handsome ornaments, slaves and wives? We must not carry back to the origins of sacrifice the meta-physical and moral ideas which did not really appear until much later. And since the necessity of eating, and the pleasure of eating choice food, take a foremost rank in the estimation of infant peoples, it is not surprising that the food-offering was the most frequent and the most important amongst them, so as in some sort to absorb all the rest.

And here we are compelled to bow before a fact which cannot possibly be disputed, namely, that traces of the primitive sacrifice of human victims meet us everywhere. And this shows that cannibalism, which is now restricted to a few of the savage tribes who have remained closest to the animal life, was once universal to our race. For no one would ever have conceived the idea of offering to the gods a kind of food which excited nothing but disgust and horror amongst men.

This being granted, two rival tendencies must be reckoned with. In the first place, moral development, with its influence on religious ideas, worked towards the suppression of the horrible custom of human sacrifice, whilst at the same time extirpating the taste and desire for human flesh. For we must not forget that where cannibalism still reigns, human flesh is regarded as the most delicious of foods; and the Greek mythology has preserved legends and myths that are connected with the very epoch at which human sacrifices first became an object of horror to gods and men. But, in the second place, in virtue of the strange persistency of rites and usages connected with religion, human sacrifices prevailed in many places when cannibalism had completely disappeared from the habits and tastes of the population. Thus the Semites of Western Asia and the Çivaïte Hindus, the Celts, and some of the populations of Greece and Italy, long after they had renounced cannibalism, still continued to sacrifice human beings to their deities.

And this gives us the clue to a third phase, which was actually realized in Mexico before the conquest. Cannibalism, in ordinary life, was no longer practised. The city of Mexico underwent all the horrors of famine during the siege conducted by Fernando Cortes. When the Spaniards finally entered the city, they found the streets strewn with corpses, which is a sufficient proof that human flesh was not eaten even in dire extremities. And, nevertheless, the Aztecs not only pushed human sacrifices to a frantic extreme, but they were ritual cannibals, that is to say, there were certain occasions on which they ate the flesh of the human victims whom they had immolated.

This practice was connected with another religious conception, grafted upon the former one. Almost everywhere, but especially amongst the Aztecs, we find the notion that the victim devoted to a deity, and therefore destined to pass into his substance and to become by assimilation an integral part of him, is already co-substantial with him, has already become part of him; so that the worshipper in his turn, by himself assimilating a part of the victim's flesh, unites himself in substance with the divine being. And now observe that in all religions the longing, whether grossly or spiritually apprehended, to enter into the closest possible union with the adored being is fundamental. This longing is inseparable from the religious sentiment itself, and becomes imperious wherever that sentiment is warm; and this consideration is enough to convince us that it is in harmony with the most exalted tendencies of our nature, but may likewise, in times of ignorance, give rise to the most deplorable aberrations.

Note this, again, that immolation or sacrifice cannot be accomplished without suffering to the victim. Yet more: the immense importance of sacrifice in the inferior religions raises the mere rite itself to a position of unrivalled efficacy as gauged by the childlike notions that have given it birth, so that at last it acquires an intrinsic and magical virtue in the eyes of the sacrificers. They have lost all distinct idea as to how their sacrifice gives pleasure to the gods, but they retain the firm belief that as a matter of fact, it is the appointed means of acting upon their dispositions and modifying their will. The civilized Greeks and Romans no longer believed that their gods ate the flesh of the sacrifices, but this did not prevent their continuing them as the indispensable means of appeasing the wrath or conciliating the favour of the deities. To such a length was this carried in India and Iran, that sacrifice finally came to be regarded as a cosmic force, a creative act. The gods themselves sacrificed as a means of creation, or of modifying the existing order of the world. This idea of the intrinsic and magical virtue of sacrifice naturally re-acted on the importance attached to the sufferings of the victim so inseparably connected with it, until the latter came to be regarded as amongst the prime conditions of an efficacious sacrifice. For the rest, I need not do more than mention the notions of substitution, of compensation, and of renunciation on the part of the sacrificer, which so readily attach themselves to the idea of sacrifice, and represent its moral aspects.

Now all these considerations will help us to understand both the fearful intensity and the special significance of the practice of human sacrifice established among the Aztecs. And here I must ask you to harden your hearts for a few moments while I conduct you through this veritable chamber of horrors.

The Mexican sacrifices were, in truth, of the most frightful description. It was an axiom amongst the Aztecs that none but human sacrifices were truly efficacious. They were continually making war in order to get a supply of victims. They regarded the victim, when once selected, as a kind of incarnation of the deity who was ultimately to consume his flesh, or at any rate his heart. They retained the practice of cannibalism as a religious rite, and, as though they had had some of the Red-skins' blood in their veins, they refined upon the tortures which they forced those victims, whom they had almost adored the moment before, to undergo at last.

These victims were regularly selected a considerable time in advance. They were vigilantly watched, but in other respects were well cared for and fed with the choicest viands—in a word, fattened. There was not a single festival upon which at least one of these victims was not immolated, and in many cases great numbers of them were flung upon the "stone of sacrifices," where the priests laid their bosoms open, tore out their hearts, and placed them, as the epitome of the men themselves, in a vessel full of burning rezin or "copal," before the statue of the deity. Some few of these sacrifices it is my duty to describe to you.

For example: To celebrate the close of the annual rule of Tezcatlipoca, which fell at the beginning of May, they set apart a year beforehand the handsomest of the prisoners of war captured during the preceding year. They clothed him in a costume resembling that of the image of the god. He might come and go in freedom, but he was always followed by eight pages, who served at once as an escort and a guard. As he passed, I will not say that the people either knelt or did not kneel before him, for in Mexico the attitude expressive of religious adoration was that of squatting down upon the haunches. As he passed, then, the people squatted all along the streets as soon as they heard the sound of the bells that he carried on his hands and feet. Twenty days before the festival, they redoubled their care and attention. They bathed him, anointed him with perfume, and gave him four beautiful damsels as companions, each one bearing the name of a goddess, and all of them instructed to leave nothing undone to make their divine spouse as happy as possible. He then took part in splendid banquets, surrounded by the great Mexican nobles. But the day before the great festival, they placed him and his four wives on board a royal canoe and carried them to the other side of the lake. In the evening the four goddesses quitted their unhappy god, and his eight guardians conducted him to a lonely teocalli, a league distant, where he was flung upon the stone of sacrifices and his heart torn from his bosom. He must disappear and die with the god whom he represented, who must now make way for Uitzilopochtli. This latter deity likewise had his human counterpart, who had to lead a war-dance in his name before being sacrificed. He had the grotesque privilege of choosing the hour of his own immolation, but under the condition that the longer he delayed it the less would his soul be favoured in the abode of Uitzilopochtli. For we must note that in the Mexican order of ideas, though the flesh of the victims was destined to feed the gods to whom they were sacrificed, their souls became the blessed and favoured slaves or servants of these same gods.

Centeotl, or Toci, the goddess of the harvest, had her human sacrifices also, but in this case a woman figured as protagonist. She, too, was dressed like the goddess, and entrusted to the care of four midwives, priestesses of Centeotl, who were commissioned to pet and amuse her. A fortnight before the festival, they celebrated "the arm dance" before her, in which the dancers, without moving their feet, perpetually raised and lowered their arms, as a symbol of the vegetation fixed at its roots, but moving freely above. Then she had to take part in a mock combat, after which she received the title of "image of the mother of the gods." The day before her execution, she went to pay what was called her "farewell to the market," in which she was conducted to the market of Mexico, sowing maize all along the street as she went, and reverenced by the people as Toci, "our grandmother." But the following midnight she was carried to the top of a teocalli, perched upon the shoulders of a priest, and swiftly decapitated. Then they flayed her without loss of time. The skin of the trunk was chopped off, and a priest, wrapping himself in the bleeding spoil, traversed the streets in procession, and made pretence of fighting with soldiers who were interspersed in the cortége. The skin of the legs was carried to the temple of Centeotl, the son, where another priest made himself a kind of mask with it, to represent his god, and sacrificed four captives in the ordinary way. After this, the priest, accompanied by some soldiers, bore the hideous shreds to a point on the frontier, where they were buried as a talisman to protect the empire.

The festivals of Tlaloc, god of rain, were perhaps yet more horrible. At one of them they sacrificed a number of prisoners of war, one upon another, clothed like the god himself. They tore out their hearts in the usual way, and then carried them in procession, enclosed in a vase, to throw them into a whirlpool of the lake of Mexico, which they imagined to be one of the favoured residences of the aquatic deity. But it was worse still at the festival of this same Tlaloc which fell in February. On this occasion a number of young children were got together, and decked with feathers and precious stones. They put wings upon them, to enable them to fly up, and then placed them on litters, and bore them through the city in grand procession and with the sound of trumpets. The people, says Sahagun,[21] could not choose but weep to see these poor little ones led off to the sacrifice. But if the children themselves cried freely, it was all the better, for it was a sign that the rain would be abundant.[22]

I will not try your nerves by dwelling much longer on this dismal subject, though there is no lack of material. At the feast of Xipe, "the flayed," for example, whole companies of men were wrapped in the skins of sacrificed captives, and engaged in mock battles in that costume. But the only further instance I am compelled to mention is connected with the festival of the god of fire, Xiuhtecutli, which was celebrated with elaborate ceremonies. At set of sun, all who had prisoners of war or slaves to offer to the deity brought forward their victims, painted with the colours of the god, danced along by their side, and shut them up in a building attached to the teocalli of Fire. Then they mounted guard all round, singing hymns. At midnight, each owner entered and severed a lock of the hair of his slave or slaves, to be carefully preserved as a talisman. At daybreak they brought out the victims and led them to the foot of the temple stair. There the priests took them upon their shoulders and carried them up to the higher platform, where they had prepared a great brazier of burning embers. Here each priest flung his human burden upon the fire, and I leave you to imagine the indescribable scene that ensued. Nor is this all. The same priests, armed with long hooks, fished out the poor wretches before they were quite roasted to death, and despatched them in the usual fashion on the stone of sacrifices.[23]

It was after these offerings of private devotion that family and friendly gatherings were held, at which a part of the victim's flesh was eaten, under the idea that by thus sharing the food of the deity his worshippers entered into a closer union with him. We ought, however, to note that a master never ate the flesh of his own slave, inasmuch as he had been his guest, and as it were a member of his family. He waited till his friends returned his attention.

II.

Human sacrifice, Gentlemen, appears to have been a universal practice; but wherever the human sympathies developed themselves rapidly, it was early superseded by various substituted rites which it was supposed might with advantage replace it. Such were flagellation, mutilation of some unessential part of the body, or the emission of a certain quantity of blood. This last practice, in particular, might be regarded as an act of individual devotion, a gift made to the gods by the worshipper himself out of his own very substance. The priesthood of Quetzalcoatl, who had little taste for human sacrifices, seem to have introduced this method of propitiating the gods by giving them one's own blood; and the practice of drawing it from the tongue, the lips, the nose, the ears or the bosom, came to be the chief form of expression of individual piety and penitence in Central America and in Mexico. The priests in particular owed it to their special character to draw their blood for the benefit of the gods, and nothing could be stranger than the refined methods they adopted to accomplish this end. For instance, they would pass strings or splinters through their lips or ears and so draw a little blood. But then a fresh string or a fresh splinter must be added every day, and so it might go on indefinitely, for the more there were, the more meritorious was the act; nor can we doubt that the idea of the suffering endured enhancing the merit of the deed itself, was already widely spread in Mexico. There was a system of Mexican asceticism, too, specially characterized by the long fasts which the faithful, and more particularly the priests, endured. Indeed, fasting is one of the most general and ancient forms of adoration. It rests, in the first place, on an instinctive feeling that a man is more worthy to present himself before the divine beings when fasting than when stuffed with food; and, in the second place, on the fact that fasting is shown by experience to promote dreams, hallucinations, extasies and so forth, which have always been considered as so many forms of communication with the deity.[24] It was only later that fasting became the sign and index of mourning, and therefore of sincere repentance and profound sorrow. Mexico had its solitaries or hermits, too, who sought to enter into closer communion with the gods by living in the desert under conditions of the severest asceticism. Are we not once more tempted to exclaim that there is nothing new under the sun?

But the devotees of the ancient Mexican religion had other methods of uniting themselves substantially and corporeally with their gods; and in accordance with the notions which we have seen were accredited by their religion, they had developed a kind (or kinds) of communion from which, with a little theology, a regular doctrine of transubstantiation might have been drawn.

Thus, at the third great festival in honour of Uitzilopochtli (celebrated at the time of his death), they made an image of the deity in dough, steeped it in the blood of sacrificed children, and partook of the pieces.[25] In the same way the priests of Tlaloc kneaded statuettes of their god in dough, cut them up, and gave them to eat to patients suffering from the diseases caused by the cold and wet.[26] The statuettes were first consecrated by a small sacrifice. And so, too, at the yearly festival of the god of fire, Xiuhtecutli, an image of the deity, made of dough, was fixed in the top of a great tree which had been brought into the city from the forest. At a certain moment the tree was thrown down, on which of course the idol broke to pieces, and the worshippers all scrambled for a bit of him to eat.

It has been asked how far any moral idea had penetrated this religion, the repulsive aspects of which we have been describing. The question is a legitimate one. I believe, Gentlemen, that in studying the religious origins of the different peoples of the earth, we shall come to the conclusion that the fusion of the religious and moral life—which has long been an accomplished fact for us, especially since the Gospel, so that we cannot admit the possibility of uniting immorality and piety for a single instant—is not primitive, but is due to the development of the human spirit, and to healthier, more complete and more religious ideas concerning the moral law. At the beginning of things, and in our own day amongst savages, nay, even amongst the most ignorant strata of the population in civilized countries, it is obvious that religion and morals have extremely little to do with each other. Some authors, accordingly, in the face of all the monstrous cruelty, selfishness and inhumanity of the Mexican religion, have concluded that no element of morality entered into it at all, but that all was self-seeking and fanaticism.

This is an exaggeration. We have seen that amongst the nature-gods of Mexico there was one, Tezcatlipoca, who was looked upon as the austere guardian of law and morals. If we are to believe Father Sahagun,—and even if we allow for strong suspicions as to the accuracy of his translations of the prayers and exhortations uttered under certain circumstances by parents and priests,—it is evident that the Mexicans were taught to consider a decent and virtuous life as required by the gods. Indeed, they had a system of confession, in which the priest received the statement of the penitent, laid a penance on him, and assured him of the pardon of the gods. Generally the penitents delayed their confession till they were advanced in age, for relapses were regarded as beyond the reach of pardon.[27] It would be nearer the truth to say that the religious ethics of the Mexicans had entered upon that path of dualism[28] by which alone, in almost every case, the normal synthesis or rational reconciliation of the demands of physical nature and the moral life has been ultimately reached. For inasmuch as fidelity to duty often involves a certain amount of suffering, the suffering comes to be regarded as the moral act itself, and artificial sufferings are voluntarily incurred under the idea that they are the appointed price of access to a higher and more perfect life, in closer conformity with the divine will. The cruel rites which entered into the very tissue of the Mexican religion could hardly fail to strengthen the same ascetic tendency, by encouraging the idea that pain itself was pleasant to the eyes of the gods. But the truth is that in this matter we can discern no more than tendencies. There are symptoms of men's minds being busy with the relation of the moral to the religious life, but no fixed or systematic conclusions had been reached. It might, perhaps, have been otherwise in the sequel, and these tendencies might ultimately have taken shape in corresponding theories and doctrines, had not the Spanish conquest intervened to put an end for ever to the evolution of the Mexican religion.

I have frequently spoken of the Mexican priests, and the time has now come for dwelling more explicitly on this priesthood.

It was very numerous, and had a strong organization reared on an aristocratic basis, into which political calculations manifestly entered. The noblest families (including that of the monarch) had the exclusive privilege of occupying the highest sacerdotal offices. The priests of Uitzilopochtli held the primacy. Their chief was sovereign pontiff, with the title of Mexicatl-Teohuatzin, "Mexican lord of sacred things," and Teotecuhtli, "divine master." Next to him came the chief priest of Quetzalcoatl, who had no authority, however, except over his own order of clergy. He lived as a recluse in his sanctuary, and the sovereign only sent to consult him on certain great occasions; whereas the primate sat on the privy council and exercised disciplinary powers over all the other priests in the empire. Every temple and every quarter had its regular priests. No one could enter the priesthood until he had passed satisfactorily through certain tests or examinations before the directors of the Calmecac, or houses of religious education, of which we shall speak presently. The power of the clergy was very great. They instructed youth, fixed the calendar, preserved the knowledge of the annals and traditions indicated by the hieroglyphics, sang and taught the religious and national hymns, intervened with special ceremonies at birth, marriage and burial, and were richly endowed by taxes raised in kind upon the products of the soil and upon industries. Every successful aspirant to the priesthood, having passed the requisite examinations, received a kind of unction, which communicated the sacred character to him. All this indicates a civilization that had already reached a high point of development; but the indelible stain of the Mexican religion re-appears every moment even where it seems to rise highest above the primitive religions: amongst the ingredients of the fluid with which the new priest was anointed was the blood of an infant!

The priests' costume in general was black. Their mantles covered their heads and fell down their sides like a veil. They never cut their hair, and the Spaniards saw some of them whose locks descended to their knees. Probably this was a part of the solar symbolism. The rays of the Sun are compared to locks of hair, and we very often find the solar heroes or the servants of the Sun letting their hair grow freely in order that they may resemble their god. Their mode of life was austere and sombre. They were subject to the rules of a severe asceticism, slept little, rose at night to chant their canticles, often fasted, often drew their own blood, bathed every night (in imitation of the Sun again), and in many of the sacerdotal fraternities the most rigid celibacy was enforced. You will see, then, that I did not exaggerate when I spoke of the belief that the gods were animated by cruel wills and took pleasure in human pain as having launched the Mexican religion on a path of a systematic dualism and very stern asceticism.[29]

But the surprise we experience in noting all these points of resemblance to the religious institutions of the Old World, perhaps reaches its culminating point when we learn that the Mexican religion actually had its convents. These convents were often, but not always, places of education for both sexes, to which all the free families sent their children from the age of six or nine years upwards. There the boys were taught by monks, and the girls by nuns, the meaning of the hieroglyphics, the way to reckon time, the traditions, the religious chants and the ritual. Bodily exercises likewise had a place in this course of education, which was supposed to be complete when the children had reached the age of fifteen. The majority of them were now sent back to their families, while the rest stayed behind to become priests or simple monks. For there were religious orders, under the patronage of the different gods, and convents for either sex. The monastic rule was often very severe. In many cases it involved abstinence from animal food, and the people called the monks of these severer orders Quaquacuiltin, or "herb-eaters." There were likewise associations resembling our half-secular, half-ecclesiastical fraternities. Thus we hear of the society of the "Telpochtiliztli," an association of young people who lived with their families, but met every evening at sunset to dance and sing in honour of Tezcatlipoca. And, finally, we know that ancient Mexico had its hermits and its religious mendicants.[30] The latter, however, only took the vow of mendicancy for a fixed term. These are the details which led von Humboldt and some other writers to believe that Buddhism must have penetrated at some former period into Mexico. Not at all! What we have seen simply proves that asceticism, the war against nature, everywhere clothes itself in similar forms, suggested by the very constitution of man; and there is certainly nothing in common between the gentle insipidity of Buddha's religion and the sanguinary faith of the Aztecs.