The girls were under a rule similar to that of the boys. They led a hard enough life in the convents set apart for them, fasting often, sleeping without taking off their clothes, and (when it was their turn to be on duty) getting up several times in the night to renew the incense that burned perpetually before the gods. They learned to sew, to weave, and to embroider the garments of the idols and the priests. It was they who made the sacred cakes and the dough idols, whose place in the public festivals I have described to you. At the age of fifteen, the same selection took place among the girls as among the boys. Those who stayed in the convent became either priestesses, charged with the lower sacerdotal offices, or directresses of the convents set aside for instruction, or simple nuns, who were known as Cihuatlamacasque, "lady deaconesses," or Cihuaquaquilli, "lady herb-eaters," inasmuch as they abstained from meat. The most absolute continence was rigorously enforced, and breach of it was punished by death.[31]

One cannot but ask whether a priesthood so firmly organized, in which was centred the whole intellectual life and all that can he called the science of Mexico, had not elaborated any higher doctrines or cosmogonic theories such as we owe to the priesthoods of the Old World, especially when we know that they regulated the calendar, which presupposes some astronomical conceptions.

But here we enter upon a region that has not yet been methodically reclaimed by the historians. We have often enough been presented with Mexican cosmogonies, but the fundamental error of all these expositions is, that they present as a fixed and established body of doctrine what was in reality a very loose and unformed mass of traditions and speculations. The sponsors of these cosmogonies agree neither as to their number nor their order of succession, and it is obvious that a mistaken zeal to bring them as near as possible to the Biblical tradition has been at work. An attempt has even been made to find a Mexican Noah, coming out of the ark, in a fish-god emerging from a kind of box floating on the waters.[32]

One thing, however, is certain, namely, that these cosmogonies are not Aztec. The Aztec deities proper play no part in them. We may therefore suppose that they are of Central American origin, or are due to that priesthood of Quetzalcoatl which continued its silent work in the depths of its mysterious retreats. The contradictions of our authorities as to the number and order of these cosmogonies suggest the idea that their arrangement one after another is no more than a harmonizing attempt to bring various originally distinct cosmogonies into connection with each other. The fact is that others yet are known, in addition to those which have taken their place in what we may call the classical list established by Humboldt and Müller.[33] In this classical list there are five ages of the world, separated from each other by universal cataclysms, something after the fashion of the successive creations of the school of Cuvier. Each of these ages is called a Sun, and, according to the elements that preponderate during their respective courses, they are called, 1st, the Sun of the Earth; 2nd, the Sun of Fire; 3rd, the Sun of the Air; and 4th, the Sun of Water. The fifth Sun, which is the present one, has no special name. We cannot enter upon the details concerning each of these Suns, and they are not very interesting in any case. They contain confused reminiscences of primitive life, of the ancient populations of Anahuac, of old and bygone worships, but nothing particularly characteristic or original. The only specially striking feature in this mass of cosmogonic traditions is the sense of the instability of the established order alike of nature and society which pervades them. What was it that inspired the Mexicans with this feeling? Perhaps the mighty destructive forces for which tropical countries, equatorial seas and volcanic regions, so often furnish a theatre, had shaken confidence in the permanence of the physical constitution of the world. Perhaps the numerous political and social revolutions, the frequent successions of peoples, rulers and subjects in turn, had accustomed the mind to conceive and anticipate perpetual changes, of which the successive ages of the world were but the supreme expression; and finally, perhaps that quasi-messianic expectation of the return of Quetzalcoatl, to be accompanied by a complete renewal of things, may have given an additional point of attachment to this belief in the caducity of the whole existing order. What is certain is that this sentiment itself was very widely spread. It served as a consolation to the peoples who were crushed beneath the cruel yoke of the Aztecs. They might well cherish the thought that all this would not last for ever; and even the Aztecs themselves had no unbounded confidence in the stability of their empire. The Spaniards profited greatly by this vague and all but universal distrust. After their victory they made much of pretended prodigies that had shadowed it forth, and even of prophecies that had announced it.[34] But the state of mind of the populations concerned being given, at whatever moment the Spaniards had arrived they would have been able to appeal to auguries of a like kind, by dint of just giving them that degree of precision and clearness which usually distinguishes predictions that are recorded after their fulfilment!

A further proof that the Mexican religion helped to spread this sense of the instability of things is furnished by the grand jubilee festival which was celebrated every fifty-two years in the city of Mexico and throughout the empire. The Mexican cycle, marking the coincidence of four times thirteen lunar and four times thirteen solar years,[35] counted two-and-fifty years, and was called a "sheaf of years." Now whenever the dawn of the fifty-third year drew near, the question was anxiously put, whether the world would last any longer, and preparations were made for the great ceremony of the Toxilmolpilia, or "binding up of years." The day before, every fire was extinguished. All the priests of the city of Mexico marched in procession to a mountain situated at two leagues' distance. The entire population followed them. They watched the Pleiades intently. If the world was to come to an end, if the sun was never to rise again, the Pleiades would not pass the zenith; but the moment they passed it, it was known that a new era of fifty-two years had been guaranteed to men. Fire was kindled anew by the friction of wood. But the wood rested on the bosom of the handsomest of the prisoners, and the moment it was lighted the victim's body was opened, his heart torn out, and both heart and body burned upon a pile that was lit by the new fire. No sooner did the people, who had remained on the plain below, perceive the flame ascend, than they broke into delirious joy. Another fifty-two years was before the world. More victims were sacrificed in gratitude to the gods. Brands were lighted at the sacred flame on the mountain, from which the domestic fires were in their turn kindled, and swift couriers were despatched with torches, replaced continually on the route, to the very extremities of the empire. It was in the year 1507, twelve years before Cortes disembarked, that the Toxilmolpilia was celebrated for the last time. In 1559, although the mass of the natives had meanwhile been converted to Roman Catholicism, the Spanish government had to take severe measures to prevent its repetition.[36]

We have far firmer footing, then, than is furnished by the shifting ground of the cosmogonies, when we insist upon the general prevalence of the feeling that the world might veritably come to an end as it had done before. Beyond this there was nothing fixed or generally accepted. Much the same might be said of the future life. The Mexicans believed in man's survival after death. This we see from the practice of putting a number of useful articles into the tomb by the side of the corpse, after first breaking them, so that they too might die and their spirits might accompany that of the departed to his new abodes. They even gave him some Tepitoton, or little household gods, to take with him, and as a rule they killed a dog to serve as his guide in the mysterious and painful journey which he was about to undertake. Sometimes a very rich man would go so far as to have his chaplain slaughtered, that he might not be deprived of his support in the other world. But in all this there is nothing to distinguish the Mexican religion from the beliefs that stretched over the whole of America, and there is no indication that any moral conception had as yet vivified and hallowed the prospect beyond the grave. The mass of ordinary mortals remained in the sombre, dreary, monotonous realm of Mictlan; for in Mexico, as in Polynesia, a really happy immortality was a privilege reserved for the aristocracy. There were several paradises, including that of Tlaloc, and above all the "mansion of the Sun," destined to receive the kings, the nobles and the warriors. There they hunt, they dance, they accompany the sun in his course, they can change themselves into clouds or humming-birds. An exception is made, however, irrespective of social rank, in favour of warriors who fall in battle and women who die in child-bed, as well as for the victims sacrificed in honour of the celestial deities and destined to become their servants. So, too, the paradise of Tlaloc, a most beauteous garden, is opened to all who have been drowned (for the god of the waters has taken them to himself), to all who have died of the diseases caused by moisture, and to the children who have been sacrificed to him. We recognize in these exceptions an unquestionable tendency to introduce the idea of justice as qualifying the desolating doctrine of aristocratic privilege; and probably this principle of justice would have become preponderant, here as elsewhere, had not the destinies of the Mexican religion been suddenly broken off. Nor is it easy to explain the asceticism and austerities of which we have spoken, except on the supposition that those who practised them all their lives believed they were thereby acquiring higher rights in the future life. It must be admitted, however, that it is not in its doctrine of a future life that the Mexican religion reached its higher developments.

We must postpone till we have examined the Peruvian religion, which presents so many analogies to that of Mexico, while at the same time differing from it so considerably, the final considerations suggested by the strange compound of beliefs, now so barbarous and now so refined, which we have passed in review. Spanish monks, as we all know, succeeded within a few years in bringing the populations who had submitted to the hardy conquerors within the pale of their Church. It was no very difficult task. The whole past had vanished. The royal families, the nobility, the clergy, all had perished. Faith in the national gods had been broken by events. The new occupants laid a grievous yoke upon the subject peoples, whom they crushed and oppressed with hateful tyranny; but we must do the Franciscan monks, who were first on the field in the work of conversion, the justice of testifying that they did whatever in them lay to soften the fate of their converts and to plead their cause before the Court of Spain. Nor were their efforts always unsuccessful. They were rewarded by the unstinted confidence and affection of the unhappy natives, who found little pity or comfort save at the hands of the good Fathers. Let us add that many of the peoples, especially those from whom the human tithes of which we have spoken had been exacted by the Aztecs, were sensible of the humane and charitable aspects of a religion that repudiated these hideous sacrifices in horror, and raised up the hearts of the oppressed by its promises of a future bliss conditioned by neither birth nor social rank.[37]

But the worthy monks could not give what they had not got. And the religious education which they gave their converts reflected only too faithfully their own narrow and punctilious monastic spirit, itself almost as superstitious, though in another way, as what it supplanted. Nay, more: in spite of the best dispositions on either side, it was inevitable that the ancient habits and beliefs should long maintain themselves, though more or less shrouded beneath the new orthodoxy. In 1571, the terrible Inquisition of Spain came and established itself in Mexico to put an end to this state of things; and alas! it found as many heretics as it could wish to show that it had not come for nothing. And when the natives saw the fearful tribunal at work, when the fires of the autos-da-fé were kindled on the plain of Mexico and consumed by tens or hundreds the victims condemned by the Holy Office, do you suppose that the new converts felt well assured in their own hearts that the God of the Gospel was, after all, much better than Uitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca?[38]

But we are stepping beyond the domain of history we have marked out for ourselves. The religion of Mexico is dead, and we cannot desire a resurrection for it. But the memory it has left behind is at once mournful and instructive. It has enriched history with its confirmatory evidence as to the genesis, the power and the tragic force of religion in human nature; and he who inspects its annals, now so poetical and now so terror-laden, pauses in pensive thought before the grotesque but imposing monument which thrills him with admiration even while he recoils with horror.

LECTURE IV.

PERU.—ITS CIVILIZATION AND CONSTITUTION, THE LEGEND OF THE INCAS: THEIR POLICY AND HISTORY.

We pass to-day from North to South America; and as in the former we confined ourselves to the district which presented the Europeans of the sixteenth century with the unlooked-for spectacle of a native civilization and religion in an advanced stage of development, so in the latter we shall specially study that other indigenous civilization, likewise supported and patronized by a very curious and original religion, which established itself along the Cordilleras on the immensely long but comparatively narrow strip of land between those mountains and the ocean. Peru, like Mexico, was the country of an organized solar religion; but the former, even more than the latter, displays this religion worked into the very tissues of a most remarkable social structure, with which it is so completely identified as not to be so much as conceivable without it. The empire of the Incas is one of the most complete and absolute theocracies—perhaps the very most complete and absolute—that the world has seen. But in order to get a clear idea of what the Peruvian religion was, we must first say a word as to the country itself, its physical constitution and its history.

The Peru of the Incas, as discovered and conquered by the Spaniards, transcended the boundaries of the country now so called, inasmuch as it included the more ancient kingdom of Quito (corresponding pretty closely to the modern republic of Ecuador), and extended over parts of the present Chili and Bolivia. We learn from our ordinary maps that this whole territory was narrowly confined between the mountains and the sea. Observe, however, that it was nearly two thousand five hundred miles in length, four times as long as France, and that its breadth varied from about two hundred and fifty to about five hundred miles. From West to East it presents three very different regions. 1. A strip along the coast where rain hardly ever falls, but where the night dews are very heavy and the produce of the soil tropical. 2. The Sierra formed by the first spurs of the Cordilleras, and already high enough above the level of the sea to produce the vegetation of the temperate regions. Here maize was cultivated on a large scale, and great herds of vicunias, alpacas and llamas were pastured. And here we may note a great point of advantage enjoyed by Peru over Mexico; for the llama, though not very strong, serves as a beast of burden and traction, its flesh is well flavoured and its wool most useful. 3. The Montaña, consisting of a region even yet imperfectly known, over which extend unmeasured forests, the home of the jaguar and the chinchilla, of bright-plumed birds and of dreaded serpents. Above these forests stretch the dizzy peaks and the volcanos. The most remarkable natural phenomenon of the country is the lake Titicaca, about seven times as great as the lake of Geneva, not far distant from the ancient capital Cuzco, and serving, like Anahuac, the lake district of Mexico, as the chief focus of Peruvian civilization and religion. The mysterious disappearance beneath the ground of the river by which it empties itself, stimulated yet further the myth-forming imagination of the dwellers on its shores.

There is a remarkable difference between the ways in which the two civilizations of which we are speaking formed and consolidated themselves in Mexico and Peru respectively. We have seen that in Mexico the state of things to which the Spanish conquest put an end was the result of a long series of revolutions and wars, in which successive peoples had ruled and served in turn; and the Aztecs had finally seized the hegemony, while adopting a civilization the origins of which must be sought in Central America. In Peru things had followed a more regular and stable course. The dynasty of the Incas had maintained itself for about six centuries as the patron of social progress and of a remarkably advanced culture. Starting from its native soil on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and long confined in its authority to Cuzco and its immediate territory, this family had finally succeeded in indefinitely extending its dominion between the mountains and the sea, sometimes by successful wars and sometimes by pacific means; for whole populations had more than once been moved to range themselves of their own free will under the sceptre of the Incas, so as to enjoy the advantages assured to their subjects by their equitable rule. When Pizarro and his companions disembarked in Peru, the great Inca, Huayna Capac, had but recently completed the empire by the conquest of the kingdom of Quito.

It has been asked, which was the more marvellous feat, the conquest of Mexico by Fernando Cortes, or that of Peru by Pizarro. One consideration weighs heavily in favour of Cortes. It is that he was the first. When Francisco Pizarro threw himself with his handful of adventurers upon Peru in 1531, he had before him the example of his brilliant precursor, to teach him how a few Europeans might impose by sheer audacity on the amazed and superstitious peoples; and in many respects he simply copied his model. Like him, he took advantage of the divisions and rivalries of the natives; like him, he found means of securing the person of the sovereign, and was thereby enabled to quell the subjects. On the other hand, he had even fewer followers than Cortes. His company scarcely numbered over two hundred men at first, and the Peruvian empire was more compact and more wisely organized than that of Mexico. We shall presently see the principal cause to which his incredible success must be ascribed; but the net result seems to be, that one hesitates to pronounce the feats of either adventurer more astounding than those of the other, especially when we remember that Pizarro was without the political genius of Fernando Cortes, and was so profoundly ignorant that he could not so much as read!

The family of the Incas, whose scourge Pizarro proved to be, must have numbered many fine politicians in its ranks. Never has what is called a "dynastic policy" been pursued more methodically and ably. The proofs assail us at every moment. The Incas were a family of priest-kings, who reigned, as children of the Sun, over the Peruvian land, and the Sun himself was the great deity of the country. To obey the Incas was to obey the supreme god. Their person was the object of a veritable cultus, and they had succeeded so completely in identifying the interests of their own family with those of religion, of politics and of civilization, that it was no longer possible to distinguish them one from another. And yet it was this very method, so essentially theocratic, of insisting on the minute regulation of all the actions of human life in the name of religion, which finally ruined the Incas. Peru, in the sixteenth century, had become one enormous convent, in which everything was mechanically regulated, in which no one could take the smallest initiative, in which everything depended absolutely upon the will of the reigning Inca; so that the moment Pizarro succeeded in laying hold of this Inca, this "father Abbé," everything collapsed in a moment, and nothing was left of the edifice constructed with such sagacity but a heap of sand. And indeed this is the fatal result of every theocracy, for it can never really be anything but a hierocracy or rule of priests. On the one hand it must be absolute, for the sovereign priest rules in the name of God; and on the other hand it is fatally impelled to concern itself with every minutest affair, to interfere vexatiously in all private concerns (since they too affect religious ethics and discipline), and to multiply regulations against every possible breach of the ruling religion. It is a general lesson of religious history that is illustrated so forcibly by the fate of the Inca priest-kings.

I will not weary you in this case, any more than in that of Mexico, with the enumeration of the authors to whom we must go for information on the political and religious history of the strange country with which we are dealing. I must, however, say a few words concerning a certain writer who long enjoyed the highest of reputations, and was regarded throughout the last century as the most trustworthy and complete authority in Peruvian matters. The Peruvians, far as their civilization had advanced in many respects, were behind even the Mexicans in the art of preserving the memory of the past; for they had not so much as the imperfect hieroglyphics known to the latter. They made use of Quipus or Quipos, indeed, which were fringes, the threads of which were variously knotted according to what they were intended to represent; but unfortunately the Peruvians anticipated on a large scale what so often happens on the small scale amongst ourselves to those persons of uncertain memory who tie knots on their handkerchiefs to remind them of something important. They find the knot, indeed, but have forgotten what it means! And so with the Peruvians. They were not always at one as to the meaning of their ancient Quipos, and there were several ways of interpreting them. Moreover, after the conquest, the few Peruvians who might still have made some pretension to a knowledge of them did not trouble themselves to initiate the Europeans into their filiform writing. All that is left of it is the practice of the Peruvian women who preserve this method of registering the sins they intend to record against themselves in the confessional.[39] Let us hope that they at least never experience any analogous infirmity to that which besets the knot-tiers amongst ourselves.[40]

To return to the Peruvian author of whom I intended to speak. He is the celebrated Garcilasso de la Vega, who published his Commentarios reales in 1609 and 1617.[41] Garcilasso's father was a European, but his mother was a Peruvian, and, what is more, a Palla, that is to say, a princess of the family of the Incas. Born in 1540, this Garcilasso had received from his mother and a maternal uncle a great amount of information as to the family, the history and the persons of the ancient sovereigns. He was extremely proud of his origin; so much so, indeed, that he issued his works under the name of "Garcilasso el Inca de la Vega," though he had no real title to the name of Inca, which could not be transmitted by women. A genuine fervour breathes through his accounts of the history of his Peruvian country and his glorious ancestors, and it is to him that we owe the knowledge of many facts that would otherwise have been lost. The interest of his narrative explains the reputation so long enjoyed by his work, but the more critical spirit of recent times has discovered that his filial zeal has betrayed him into lavish embellishments of the situation created by the clever and cautious policy of his forebears, the Incas. He has passed in silence over many of their faults, and has attributed more than one merit to them to which they have no just claim. But in spite of all this, when we have made allowance for his family weakness, we may consult him with great advantage as to the institutions and sovereigns of ancient Peru.

We must allow, with Garcilasso, that from the year 1000 A.D. onwards (for he places the origin of their power at about this date) the Incas had accomplished a work that may well seem marvellous in many respects. Had there been any relations between Peru and Central America? Can we explain the Peruvian civilization as the result of an emigration from the isthmic region, or an imitation of what had already been realized there? There is not the smallest trace of any such thing. No doubt it would be difficult to justify a categorical assertion on a subject so obscure; but it is certain that when they were discovered, Peru and the kingdom of Quito were separated from North America by immense regions plunged in the deepest savagery. Beginning at the Isthmus of Panama, this savage district stretched over the whole northern portion of South America, broken only by the demi-civilization of the Muyscas or Chibchas (New Granada); and the Peruvians knew nothing of the Mexicans. Neither the one nor the other were navigators, and nothing in the Peruvian traditions betrays the least connection with Central America. The most probable supposition is, that an indigenous civilization was spontaneously developed in Peru by causes analogous to those which had produced a similar phenomenon in the Maya country. In Peru, as in Central America, the richness of the soil, the variety of its products, the abundance of vegetable food, especially maize, secured the first conditions of civilization. The Peruvian advance was further favoured by the fact that it was protected towards the East by almost impassable mountains, and towards the West by the sea, while to the North and South it might concentrate its defensive forces upon comparatively narrow spaces.

The whole territory of the empire was divided into three parts. The first was the property of the Sun, that is to say of the priests who officiated in his numerous temples; the second belonged to the reigning Inca; and the third to the people. The people's land was divided out every year in lots apportioned to the needs of each family, but the portions assigned to the Curacas, or nobles, were of a magnitude suited to their superior dignity. Taxes were paid in days of labour devoted to the lands of the Inca and those of the Sun, or in manufactured articles of various kinds, for the cities contained a number of artizans. Indeed, it was one of the maxims of the Incas that no part of the empire, however poor, should be exempt from paying tribute of one kind or another. To such a length was this carried, that so grave a historian as Herrera tells us how the Inca Huayna Capac, wishing to determine what kind of tribute the inhabitants of Pasto were to pay, and being assured that they were so entirely without resources or capacity of any kind that they could give him nothing at all, laid on them the annual tribute of a certain measure of vermine, preferring, as he said, that they should pay this singular tax rather than nothing.[42] We cannot congratulate the officials commissioned to collect the tribute, but we cite this sample in proof of the rigour with which the Incas carried out the principles which they considered essential to the government of the country. The special principle we have just illustrated was founded on the idea that the Sun journeys and shines for every one, and that accordingly every one should contribute towards the payment of his services. For the rest, the great herds of llamas, which constituted a regular branch of the national wealth, could only be owned by the temples of the Sun and by the Inca. Every province, every town or village, had the exact nature and the exact quantity of the products it must furnish assigned, and the Incas possessed great depôts in which were stored provisions, arms and clothes for the army. All this was regulated, accounted for and checked by means of official Quipos.

The numerous body of officials charged with the general superintendence and direction of affairs was organized in a very remarkable manner, well calculated to consolidate the Inca's power. All the officials held their authority from him, and represented him to the people, just as he himself represented the Sun-god. At the bottom of the scale was an official overseer for every ten families, next above an overseer of a hundred families, then another placed over a thousand, and another over ten thousand. Each province had a governor who generally belonged to the family of the Incas. All this constituted a marvellous system of surveillance and espionage, descending from the sovereign himself to the meanest of his subjects, and founded on the principle that the rays of the Sun pierce everywhere. The lowest members of this official hierarchy, the superintendents of ten families, were responsible to their immediate superiors for all that went on amongst those under their charge, and those superiors again were responsible to the next above them, and so on up to the Inca himself, who thus held the threads of the whole vast net-work in the depths of his palace. It was another maxim of the Peruvian state that every one must work, even old men and children. Infants under five alone were excepted. It was the duty of the superintendents of ten families to see that this was carried out everywhere, and they were armed with disciplinary powers to chastise severely any one who remained idle, or who ordered his house ill, or gave rise to any scandal. Individual liberty then was closely restrained. No one could leave his place of residence without leave. The time for marriage was fixed for both sexes—for women at eighteen to twenty, for men at twenty-four or upwards. The unions of the noble families were arranged by the Inca himself, and those of the inferior classes by his officers, who officially assigned the young people one to another. Each province had its own costume, which might not be changed for any other, and every one's birthplace was marked by a ribbon of a certain colour surrounding his head.[43] In a word, the Jesuits appear to have copied the constitution of the Peruvian society when they organized their famous Paraguay missions, and perhaps this fact may help us to trace the profound motives which in either case suggested so minutely precise a system of inserting individuals into assigned places which left no room for self-direction. The Incas and the Jesuits alike had to contend against the disconnected, incoherent turbulence of savage life, and both alike were thereby thrown upon an exaggerated system of regulations, in which each individual was swaddled and meshed in supervisions and ordinances from which it was impossible to escape.

Having said so much, we must acknowledge that, generally speaking, the Incas made a very humane and paternal use of their absolute power. They strove to moderate the desolating effects of war, and generally treated the conquered peoples with kindness. But we note that in the century preceding that of the European conquest, they had devised a means of guarding against revolts exactly similar to the measures enforced against rebellious peoples by the despotic sovereigns of Nineveh and Babylon; that is to say, they transported a great part of the conquered populations into other parts of their empire, and it appears that Cuzco, like Babylon, presented an image in miniature of the whole empire. There, as at Babylon, a host of different languages might be heard, and it was amongst the children of the deported captives that Pizarro, like Cyrus at Babylon, found allies who rejoiced in the fall of the empire that had crushed their fathers. For the rest, the Incas endeavoured to spread the language of Cuzco, the Quechua, throughout their empire.[44] Nothing need surprise us in the way of political sagacity and insight on the part of this priestly dynasty. Its monarchs seem to have hit upon every device which has been imagined elsewhere for attaching the conquered peoples to themselves or rendering their hostility harmless. Thus you will remember that at Mexico there was a chapel that served as a prison for the idols of the conquered. In the same way there stood in the neighbourhood of Cuzco a great temple with seventy-eight chapels in it, where the images of all the gods worshipped in Peru were assembled. Each country had its altar there, on which sacrifice was made according to the local customs.[45]

The Spaniards, amongst whom respect for the royal person was sufficiently profound, were amazed by the marks of extreme deference of which the Inca was the object. They could not understand at first that actual religious worship was paid to him. He alone had the inherent right to be carried on a litter, and he never went out in any other way, imitating the Sun, his ancestor, who traverses the world without ever putting his foot to the ground. Some few men and women of the highest rank might rejoice in the same distinction, but only if they had obtained the Inca's sanction. In the same way, it was only the members of the Inca family and the nobles of most exalted rank who were allowed to wear their hair long, for this was a distinctive sign of the favourites of the Sun. None could enter the presence of the reigning Inca save bare-footed, clad in the most simple garments and bearing a burden on his shoulders, all in token of humility; nor must he raise his eyes throughout the audience, for no man looks upon the face of the Sun. It seems that the Incas possessed "the art of royal majesty" in a high degree. They could retain the impassive air of indifference, whatever might be going on before their eyes, like the Sun, who passes without emotion over everything that takes place below. It was thus that Atahualpa appeared to the Spaniards, who remarked the all but stony fixity of the Peruvian monarch's features in the presence of all the new sights—horses, riding, fire-arms—which filled his subjects with surprise and terror.[46] And such was the superhuman character of the Inca, that even the base office of a spittoon—excuse such a detail—was supplied by the hand of one of his ladies.[47] The salute was given to the Inca by kissing one's hand and then raising it towards the Sun. At his death the whole country went into mourning for a year. The young Incas were educated together, under conditions of great austerity, and were never allowed to mingle with young people of the inferior classes.[48]

The army of the Incas was the army of the Sun. The obligation to military service was universal, since the Sun shines for all men. Every sound man from twenty-five to fifty might be called on to serve in his company. Thus numerous and highly-disciplined armies were raised, for the spirit of obedience had penetrated all classes of the people. The Incas had abolished the use of poisoned arrows, which is so common amongst the natives of the New World.[49]

Justice was organized after fixed laws, and, as is usually the case in theocracies, these laws were severe. For in theocracies, to the social evil of the offence is added the impiety committed against the Deity and his representative on earth. The culprit has been guilty not only of crime, but of sacrilege. The penalty of death was freely inflicted even in the case of offences that implied no evil disposition.[50] The palanquin-bearer, for instance, who should stumble under his august burden when carrying the Inca, or any one who should speak with the smallest disrespect of him, must die. But we must also note certain principles of sound justice which the Incas had likewise succeeded in introducing. The judges were controlled, and, in case of unjust judgments, punished. The law was more lenient to a first offence than to a second, to crimes committed in the heat of the moment than to those of malise prepense; more lenient to children than to adults, and (mark this) more lenient to the common people than to the great.[51] The members of the Inca family alone were exempted from the penalty of death, which in their case was replaced by imprisonment for life. They alone might, and indeed must, marry their sisters, for a reason that we shall see further on. Thus everything was calculated to set this divine family apart. Polygamy, too, was only allowed to the Incas and to the families of next highest rank after them, who, however, might not marry at all without the personal assent of the sovereign.[52] But the Incas strove to make themselves loved. Herrera tells us of establishments in which orphans and foundlings were brought up at the Inca's charges, and of the alms he bestowed on widows who had no means of subsistence.[53]

The same deliberate system shows itself in the attempts to spread education. The Incas founded schools, but they were opened only to the children of the Incas and of the nobility. This is a genuine theocratic trait. Garcilasso tells us naively that his ancestor the Inca Roca (1200—1249) in founding public schools had no idea of allowing the people "to get information, grow proud, and disturb the state."[54] The instruction, which was given by the amautas (sages), turned on the history or traditions of the country, on the laws, and on religion. We have said that writing was unknown. There were only the mnemonic Quipos, pictures on linen representing great events, and some rudimentary attempts at hieroglyphics which the Incas do not seem to have encouraged. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the hieroglyphics found graven on the rocks of Yonan are anterior to the Inca supremacy;[55] and it is said that a certain amauta who had attempted to introduce a hieroglyphic alphabet, was burned to death for impiety at the order of the Inca.[56]

The most remarkable results of the rule of the Incas are seen in the material well-being which they secured to their people. All the historians speak of the really extraordinary perfection to which Peruvian agriculture had been carried, though the use of iron was quite unknown. The solar religion fits perfectly with the habits of an agricultural people, and the Incas thought it became them, as children of the Sun, to encourage the cultivation of the soil. They ordered the execution of great public works, such as supporting walls to prevent the sloping ground from being washed away; irrigation canals, some of which measured five hundred miles, and which were preserved with scrupulous care; magazines of guano, the fertilizing virtues of which were known in Peru long before they were learned in Europe.[57] The Spaniards are far from having maintained Peruvian agriculture at the level it had reached under the Incas. Splendid roads stretched from Cuzco towards the four quarters of heaven; and Humboldt still traced some of them, paved with black porphyry, or in other cases cemented or rather macadamized, and often launched over ravines and pierced through hills with remarkable boldness.[58] The Incas had established reservoirs of drinking water for the public use from place to place along these roads, and likewise pavilions for their own accommodation when they were traversing their realms, on which occasions they never travelled more than three or four leagues a day. Bridges were thrown across the rivers, sometimes built of stone, but more often constructed on the method, so frequently described, that consists in uniting the opposing banks by two parallel ropes, along which a great basket is slung.[59] A system of royal courier posts measured the great roads as in Mexico. There were many important cities in Peru, and, according to a contemporary estimate cited by Prescott, the capital, Cuzco, even without including its suburbs, must have embraced at least two hundred thousand inhabitants.[60] Architecture was in a developed stage. We shall have to speak of the temples presently. The Inca's palaces—and there was at least one in every city of any importance—were of imposing dimensions, and a high degree of comfort and luxury was displayed within them. Gold glittered on the walls and beneath the roofs which were generally thatched with straw. They were provided with inner courts, spacious halls, sculptures in abundance, but inferior, it would seem, to those of Central America, and baths in which hot or cold water could be turned on at will.[61] In a word, when we remember from how many resources the Peruvians were still cut off by their ignorance and isolation, we cannot but admit that a genuine civilization is opening before our eyes, the defects of which must not blind us to its splendour. And since this civilization was in great part due (we shall see the force of the qualification presently) to the continuous efforts of the Incas, our next task must be to ascend to the mythic origin of that family, which we borrow from the narrative of their descendant, Garcilasso de la Vega.[62]

Properly speaking, this narrative is the local myth of the Lake Titicaca and of Cuzco, transformed into an imperial myth.

Before the Incas, we are told, men lived in the most absolute savagery. They were addicted to cannibalism and offered human victims to gods who were gross like themselves. At last the Sun took pity on them, and sent them two of his children, Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo (or Oullo, Ocollo, Oolle, &c.), to establish the worship of the Sun and alleviate their lot. The two emissaries, son and daughter of the Sun and Moon, rose one day from the depths of the Lake Titicaca. They had been told that a golden splinter which they bore with them would pierce the earth at the spot in which they were to establish themselves, and the augury was fulfilled on the site of Cuzco, the name of which signifies navel.[63] Observe that, in classical antiquity, Babylon, Athens, Delphi, Paphos, Jerusalem, and so forth, each passed for the navel of the earth. Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo, then, established the worship of the Sun. They taught the savage inhabitants of the place agriculture and the principal trades, the art of building cities, roads and aqueducts. Mama Ogllo taught the women to spin and weave. They appointed a number of overseers to take care that every one did his duty; and when they had thus regulated everything in Cuzco, they re-ascended to heaven. But they left a son and daughter to continue their work. Like their parents, the brother and sister became husband and wife, and from them descends the sovereign family of the Incas, that is to say, the Lord-rulers, or Master-rulers.

Such is the legend, from which the first deduction must be that the Inca family has nothing in common with the other denizens of earth. It is super-imposed, as it were, on humanity. It is because of this difference of origin that the laws which restrain the rest of mankind are not always applicable to the Incas. For example, they marry their sisters, as Manco Capac did, and as the Sun does, for the Moon is at once his wife and his sister. It is thus that they are enabled to preserve the divine character of their unique family.

For ourselves, we can entertain no doubt that this is a cosmic myth. Mama Ogllo, or "the mother egg," and Manco Capac, or "the mighty man," are two creators. The myth indicates that there existed an ancient solar priesthood on one of the islands or on the shores of the Lake of Titicaca (at an early date the focus of a certain civilization), and that this priestly family became at a given period the ruling power at Cuzco. It was thence that it radiated over the small states which surrounded Cuzco, embracing them one after another under its prestige and its power, until it had become the redoubtable dynasty that we know it. Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo, the creator and the cosmic egg, have become the Sun and Moon, represented by their Inca high-priest and his wife. There is no practice towards which a more wide-spread tendency exists in America than that of conferring the name of a deity on his chief priest. And if Garcilasso fixes the appearance of Manco Capac at about 1000 A.D., it is simply because the historical recollections of his family mounted no higher, and that about that time it began to rise out of its obscurity. It had the advantage of numbering in its royal line both successful warriors and, what is more, consummate politicians, instances of whose ability we have already seen and shall see again.

The point at which the legend preserved by Garcilasso is clearly at fault, is in its claim for the Incas as the first and only civilizers of Peru. We shall presently meet with other Peruvian myths of civilization which do not stand in the least connection with Manco Capac and the Incas. The kingdom of Quito, which the Inca Huayna Capac had recently conquered when the Spaniards arrived, though not on the same level as Peru proper, was far removed from the savage state, while as yet a stranger to the influence of the Incas. The country of the Muyscas, the present New Granada or land of Bogota, though standing in no connection with Peru, was the theatre of another sacerdotal and solar religion sui generis, which, though very little known, is highly interesting. The valley of the Rimac, or Lima, and the coast lands in general, were likewise centres of a pre-Inca civilization. The Chimus especially, themselves dwellers on the coast, were possessed of an original civilization differing from that of the Incas. They were the last to be conquered. To sum up, everything leads us to suppose that various centres of social development had long existed, up and down the whole region, but that, under the presiding genius of the priesthood of Manco Capac, the civilization of Cuzco had gradually acquired the preponderance, till it consecutively eclipsed and absorbed all the others.

Garcilasso labours hard to impress us with the belief that the sovereigns of his family maintained an unbroken age of gold, by dint of their wisdom and virtues. But we know, both from himself and from other sources, that as a matter of fact the Incas' sky was not always cloudless. They had numbered both bad and incapable rulers in their line. More than once they had had to suppress terrible insurrections, and their palaces had witnessed more than one tragedy."[64] But after making all allowances, we must admit that they succeeded in governing well, and more especially in maintaining intact their own religious and political prestige.

Now this very cleverness, this conscious and often extremely deliberate and astutely calculated policy, compels us to ask how far the Incas themselves were sincere in their pretension to be descended from the Sun, and their faith in the very special favour in which the great luminary held them. There is so much rationalism in their habitual tactics, that one cannot help suspecting a touch of it in their beliefs. And the truth is that their descendant, Garcilasso, has recorded certain traditions to that effect, which he has perhaps dressed up a little too much in European style, with a view to convincing us that his ancestors were monotheistic philosophers, but which nevertheless bear the marks of a certain authenticity. For the reasoning which Garcilasso puts into the mouth of the Incas closely resembles what would naturally commend itself to the mind of a pagan who should once ask himself whether the visible phenomenon, the Sun, which he adored, was really as living, as conscious, as personal, as they said. Thus the Inca Tupac Yupanqui (fifteenth century) is said to have reasoned thus:[65]

"They say that the Sun lives, and that he does everything. But when one does anything, he is near to the thing he does; whereas many things take place while the Sun is absent. It therefore cannot be he who does everything. And again, if he were a living being, would he not be wearied by his perpetual journeyings? If he were alive, he would experience fatigue, as we do; and if he were free, he would visit other parts of the heavens which he never traverses. In truth, he seems like a thing held to its task that always measures the same course, or like an arrow that flies where it is shot and not where it wills itself."

Note this line of reasoning, Gentlemen, which must have repeated itself in many minds when once they had acquired enough independence and power of thought calmly to examine those natural phenomena which primitive naïveté had animated, personified and adored as the lords of destiny. Their fixity and their mechanical and unvarying movements, when once observed, could not fail to strike a mortal blow at the faith of which they were the object. That faith was transformed without being radically changed when it was no longer the phenomenon itself, but the personal and directing spirit, the genius, the deity that was behind the phenomenon, but distinct from it and capable of detaching itself from it, which drew to itself the worship of the faithful. But in his turn this god, shaped in the image of man, must either be refined into pure spirit, or must fall below the rational and moral ideal ultimately conceived by man himself. When all is said and done, Gentlemen, Buddhism is still a religion of Nature. It is the last word of that order of religions, and exists to show us that, at any rate in its authentic and primitive form, that last word is nothingness. And that is why Buddhism has never existed in its pure form as a popular religion. For in religion, and at every stage of religion, mind seeks mind. Without that, religion is nothing. Note, too, the observant Inca's remark, that if the Sun were alive he must be dreadfully tired. You may find the same idea in more than one European mythology, in which the Sun appears as an unhappy culprit condemned to a toilsome service for some previous fault; or, again, an iron constitution is given him, to explain why he is not worn out by his ceaseless journeying.

Now Tupac Yupanqui would not be the only Inca who cherished a certain scepticism concerning his ancestor the Sun. Herrera tells us that the Inca Viracocha denied that the Sun was God;[66] and according to a story preserved by Garcilasso,[67] the Inca Huayna Capac, the conqueror of Quito, who died shortly after Pizarro's first disembarkment, must have been quite as much of a rationalist. One day, during the celebration of a festival in honour of the Sun, he is said to have gazed at the great luminary so long and fixedly that the chief priest ventured on some respectful remarks to the effect that so irreverent a proceeding must surprise the people. "I will ask you two questions," replied the monarch. "I am your king and universal lord. Would any one of you have the hardihood to order me to rise from my seat and take a long journey for his pleasure?... And would the richest and most powerful of my vassals dare to disobey if I should command him on the spot to set out in all speed for Chili?" And when the priest answered in the negative, the Inca continued: "Then I tell you there must be a greater and a more mighty lord above our father the Sun, who orders him to take the course he follows day by day. For if he were himself the sovereign lord, he would now and again omit his journey and rest, for his pleasure, even if he experienced no necessity for doing so."

Once more: I will not vouch for the exact form of these audacious speculations of the free-thinking Inca. But such reminiscences, collected independently by various authors, correspond to the conjectures forced upon us by the extreme political sagacity of the Incas. None but theocrats, in whose own hearts faith in their central principle was waning, could develop such astuteness and diplomacy. A sincere and untried faith has not recourse to so many expedients dictated by policy and the fear lest the joint in the armour should be found. It is to be presumed, however, that these heterodox speculations of the Incas themselves never passed beyond the narrow circle of the family and its immediate surroundings. Nothing of the kind would ever be caught by the ear of the people. But the evidence as to Huayna Capac's scepticism derives a certain confirmation from the fact that he was the first Inca who departed (to the woe of his empire, as it turned out) from some of the hereditary maxims that had always been scrupulously observed by his ancestors.

Huayna Capac had considerably extended the Peruvian empire by the conquest of the kingdom of Quito. In the hope, presumably, of consolidating his conquest, he resided for a long time in the newly-acquired territory, and married the conquered king's daughter, to whom he became passionately attached. This was absolutely contrary to one of the statutes of the Inca family, no member of which was allowed to marry a stranger. By his foreign wife he had a son called Atahualpa, and whether it was that he thought it good policy to allow a certain autonomy to the kingdom of Quito, or whether it was due to his tenderness towards Atahualpa's mother and the son she had borne him, certain it is that when he died at Quito in 1525, he decided that Atahualpa should reign over this newly-acquired kingdom, whilst his other son Huascar, the unimpeachably legitimate Inca, was to succeed him as sovereign of Peru proper. This, again, was a violation of the maxim that the kingdom of the Incas, which was the kingdom of the Sun, was never to be parted. It was in the midst of the struggles provoked by the hostility of the two brothers that Pizarro fell like a meteor amongst the Peruvians, who did not so much as know of the existence of any other land than the one they inhabited.

But the hour warns me that I must pause. When next we meet, I shall have to recount the fall of the great religious dynasty of the Incas, and we shall then examine more closely that Peruvian religion of which we have to-day but sketched the outline.

LECTURE V.

FALL OF THE INCAS.—PERUVIAN MYTHOLOGY, PRIESTHOOD.

You will remember that when last we met we traced out the legendary origin of the royal house of the Incas. Starting from the shores of the Lake Titicaca and the city of Cuzco, and progressively extending its combined religious and political dominion over the numerous countries situated west of the Cordilleras, it had welded them into one vast empire, centralized and organized in a way that, in spite of its defects, extorts our admiration. You had occasion to notice the extraordinary degree to which the consummate practical sagacity which distinguished the sacerdotal and imperial family of the Sun for successive centuries, was combined with purely mythological principles of faith; and we were compelled to ask whether so much diplomacy was really consistent with unreserved belief. Finally we saw that, according to the historians, more than one of the Incas had in fact expressed and justified a doubt as to the living and conscious personality of that Sun-god whose descendants they were supposed to be. The position of affairs when the Spaniards disembarked on the shores of Peru is already known to you. The Inca Huayna Capac, conqueror of Quito, had broken with the constitutional maxims of his dynasty, in the first place by marrying a stranger, the daughter of a deposed king; and in the second place by leaving the kingdom of Quito to the son, Atahualpa, whom she bore him; while he allowed Huascar, the heir-apparent to the empire, to succeed him in Peru proper, thus severing into two parts the kingdom of the Sun, in defiance of the principle hitherto recognized, which forbad the division of that kingdom under any circumstances.

The war which speedily arose between Atahualpa and his half-brother Huascar was the great cause that made it possible for Pizarro and his miniature army to get a footing in the Peruvian territory. The military forces of both sections of the empire were engaged with each other far away from the place of landing, and the inhabitants, wholly unaccustomed to take any initiative, made no resistance to the strange invaders, whose appearance, arms and horses, struck terror into their hearts, and in whom (like the Mexicans in the case of Cortes and his followers) they thought they saw supernatural beings. Pizarro, who knew how things stood, had but one idea, viz., to imitate Cortes in laying hold of the sovereign's person. Atahualpa returned victorious. He had defeated Huascar, slaughtered many members of the Inca family, and thrown his conquered brother into prison, so as to govern Peru in his name, for he was not sure that he himself would be recognized and obeyed as a legitimate descendant of the Sun. Pizarro found means of making his arrival known to him, and at the same time offered him his alliance against his enemies.[68] Atahualpa was delighted with these overtures, and invited his pretended allies to a conference near Caxamarca, where the Spaniards had installed themselves. The Inca advanced, parading all the pomp and splendour of his solar divinity. Four hundred richly-clad attendants preceded his palanquin, which sparkled at a thousand points with gold and precious stones, and was borne on the shoulders of officers drawn from amongst the highest nobles, while troops of male and female dancers followed the child of the Sun and plied their art. Then ensued one of those unique scenes of history upon which, as indignation contends with amazement for the mastery in our minds, we must pause for a moment to gaze.

Pizarro's almoner, Father Valverde, drew near to the Inca, a crucifix in one hand and a missal in the other, and by means of an interpreter delivered a regular discourse to him, in which he announced that Pope Alexander VI. had given all the lands of America to the King of Spain, which he had a right to do as the successor of St. Peter, who was himself the Vicar of the Son of God. Then he expounded the chief articles of Christian orthodoxy, and summoned the Inca there and then to abjure the religion of his ancestors, receive baptism, and submit to the sovereignty of the King of Spain. On these conditions he might continue to reign. Otherwise he must look for every kind of disaster.

Atahualpa was literally stupefied. Much of the discourse, no doubt, he failed to follow, but what he did understand filled him with indignation. He answered that he reigned over his peoples by hereditary right, and could not see how a foreign priest could dispose of lands that were not his. He should remain faithful to the religion of his fathers, "especially," he added, as he pointed to the crucifix grasped by the monk, "since my god, the Sun, is at any rate alive; whereas the one you propose for my acceptance, as far as I gather, is dead." Finally, he desired to know whence his interlocutor had derived all the strange things that he had told him. "Hence!" cried Valverde, holding out his missal. The Inca, who had never seen a book in all his life, took this object, so new to him, in his hands, opened it, put it to his ear, and finding that it said nothing, flung it contemptuously on the ground.

Pizarro saw the moment for striking the blow he contemplated. Crying out at the sacrilege, he gave his soldiers the signal of attack. Their horses and fire-arms caused an instant panic. In vain did some of his officers attempt to defend the Inca. Pizarro broke through to him, seized him by the arm and dragged him to his quarters. All his escort fled in terror.

Atahualpa, then, was in the immediate power of Pizarro, who (still imitating Cortes) surrounded his prisoner with every comfort and attention, though confining him strictly to one chamber, and warning him that any attempt at escape or resistance would be the signal for his death. Atahualpa soon perceived that thirst for gold was the great motive that had impelled the Spaniards to their audacious enterprize. He hoped to disarm them by offering as ransom gold enough to fill the chamber in which he was confined up to the height of a man. He gave the necessary orders for collecting the precious metal in the requisite amount, and to secure the good reception of the emissaries whom Pizarro despatched everywhere to receive it. One of these detachments even entered into relations with the captive Inca, Huascar, and the latter hastened to offer the Spaniards yet more gold than Atahualpa was giving them if they would take his part. Atahualpa heard of this, was alarmed, regarded his conquered brother's attempts in the light of high-treason, gave orders for his death—and was obeyed.[69]

He was not aware how precarious was his own tenure of life. Pizarro saw more and more clearly that, in order to become the real master of Peru, he must get rid of the reigning Inca, and put some child in his place, who would be a passive instrument in his hands. He was fairly alarmed by the religious obedience, timid but absolute, that the "child of the Sun," even in his captivity, received from all classes of his subjects. He fancied that from the recesses of his prison, and even while paying off his enormous ransom,[70] Atahualpa had sent secret orders to the most distant populations to arm themselves and come to his rescue. The interpreter through whom he communicated with his captive was out of temper with his master, for his head had been so turned by ambition, that he had demanded the hand of a coya, that is to say, one of the Inca's women, and had been haughtily refused. In revenge, he made malicious reports to Pizarro. But it was an accidental circumstance that brought the latter's ill-will towards his captive to a point. The Inca greatly admired the art of writing when he discovered all the uses the Spaniards made of it. One day it occurred to him to get one of the soldiers on guard over him to write the word Dio upon his nail, and he was delighted and astonished to find that every one to whom he showed it read it in the same way. So they told him that every one a little above the common herd could read and write in Europe. His evil star would have it that he showed his thumb one day to Pizarro, who could make nothing of it. Pizarro, then, could not read! Atahualpa concluded that he was merely one of the common herd, and found an opportunity of telling him so. Pizarro, stung to the quick, hesitated no longer. A mock judgment condemned Atahualpa to the extreme penalty for the crimes of idolatry, polygamy, usurpation, fratricide and rebellion. In vain he appealed to the King of Spain. He was led to the stake, and Father Valverde made him purchase by a baptism in extremis the privilege of being strangled instead of burned alive.

From this moment the fate of Peru was decided. The head once struck from the great body, long convulsions ensued, but no serious resistance was possible. Pizarro set up as Inca a young brother of Huascar's, who was at first a mere instrument in the hands of his country's bleeders, but afterwards escaped and raised insurrections which ended in his total defeat. The Spaniards had been reinforced, and had found allies amongst the peoples who had been torn from their native soils by the victorious Incas.[71] Other attempts, still attaching themselves to the name of some Inca, failed in like manner. And yet the mass of the Peruvians, in spite of their conversion to Roman Catholicism, remained obstinately attached to the memory of their Incas. One of their real or pretended descendants, in the eighteenth century, did not shrink from serving as a domestic at Madrid and Rome, as the only means of learning the secret of that European power which had so cruelly crushed his ancestors.[72] But on his return to Peru (1744 A.D.) his efforts only ended in his destruction. But this did not prevent a certain Tupac Amarou, who was descended from the Incas through a female line, from fomenting a rebellion in 1780, which it cost the Spaniards an effort to suppress.[73] Later on, after the revolution that broke the bond of subjection to Spain, this stubborn hostility of the Peruvians changed its character; but in 1867, Bustamente still tried to make capital out of the historical attachment of the natives to the Incas by declaring himself their descendant. The opposition, however, had long lost all vestige of a religious character. The legend of Manco Capac, which is still current amongst the people, has been euhemerized. It is now no more than the story of a just and enlightened prince, the benefactor of the country. The natives, it seems, are fond of playing a kind of drama, in which the trial and death of Atahualpa are represented. Superstitious to the last degree, they accept the practices of Catholicism with a submission that has in it more of a melancholy and hopeless resignation than an ardent or trusting faith. The glorious age of the Incas is gone, and will never return, but it is still regretted.[74]