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_THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1884._
LECTURES
ON THE
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION
AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE
NATIVE RELIGIONS OF MEXICO
AND PERU.
DELIVERED AT OXFORD AND LONDON,
IN APRIL AND MAY, 1884.
BY
ALBERT REVILLE, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE OF RELIGIONS AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE.
TRANSLATED BY PHILIP H. WICKSTEED, M.A.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1884.
[_All Rights reserved._]
LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. GREEN AND SON,
178, STRAND.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTION.--CENTRAL AMERICA AND MEXICO. THEIR COMMON BASES
OF CIVILIZATION AND RELIGION.
PAGE
Importance of the history of Religion 1
The religions of Mexico and Peru, and the special importance
of studying them 7
Journey to another planet 8
Parallelism of religious history in the New World and in
the Old 9
Central America and Mexico, and the authorities as to their
history and religion 14
Area and general character of this civilization 18
The Mayas 20
Toltecs, Chichimecs and Aztecs 24
The Aztec empire 29
Character of the religious conceptions common to Central
America and Mexico 35
The serpent-god and the American cross 38
Estimate of the character and significance of the parallelisms
observed 39
LECTURE II.
THE DEITIES AND MYTHS OF MEXICO.
PAGE
The Sun and Moon 45
The pyramidal Mexican temples 47
The great temple of the city of Mexico 48
The narrative of Bernal Diaz; and the two great Aztec deities,
Uitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca 51
Mythical significance of Uitzilopochtli 54
Significance of Tezcatlipoca 60
The serpent-god Quetzalcoatl, god of the east wind 62
Netzalhuatcoyotl, the philosopher-king of Tezcuco 69
Number of Mexican deities 70
Tlaloc, god of rain 71
Centeotl, goddess of maize 72
Xiuhtecutli, god of fire 74
The Mexican Venus 75
Other deities 76
The Tepitoton 77
Mictlan, god of the dead 78
Summary and reflections 79
LECTURE III.
THE SACRIFICES, SACERDOTAL AND MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS, ESCHATOLOGY
AND COSMOGONY OF MEXICO.
PAGE
Recapitulation 85
Original meaning of sacrifice 86
Human sacrifices and cannibalism 87
Importance attached to the suffering of the victims 90
Tragic and cruel character of the Mexican sacrifices 91
The victims of Tezcatlipoca and Centeotl 93
The children of Tlaloc 96
The roasted victims of the god of fire 97
Mexican asceticism 99
Mexican "communion" 101
Religious ethics 102
The priesthood 106
Convents, monks and nuns of ancient Mexico 109
Mexican cosmogonies 112
The great jubilee 116
The future life 118
Conversion of the Mexicans 121
The Inquisition 122
Conclusion 123
LECTURE IV.
PERU.--ITS CIVILIZATION AND CONSTITUTION.--THE LEGEND OF THE
INCAS: THEIR POLICY AND HISTORY
PAGE
The Peru of the Incas 127
Cortes and Pizarro 131
The Inca hierocracy 132
The Quipos 134
Authorities for the history and religion of Peru 136
Garcilasso el Inca de la Vega 137
Peruvian civilization 139
Huayna Capac's taxation 142
Social, political and military organization of Peru 143
Education 152
Material well-being 153
The legend of the Incas: Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo 156
Were the Incas really the sole civilizers of Peru? 159
Succession of the Incas and character of their rule 160
Free-thinking Incas 161
Huayna Capac's departure from traditional maxims 166
LECTURE V.
THE FALL OF THE INCAS.--PERUVIAN MYTHOLOGY PRIESTHOOD.
PAGE
Recapitulation 171
Atahualpa and Pizarro 172
Father Valverde's discourse 174
Atahualpa's imprisonment and death 176
Inca pretenders 179
Worship of the Sun and Moon 182
Viracocha, god of fertilizing showers 184
His consort, Mama Cocha 186
Old Peruvian hymn 187
Pachacamac, god of internal fire 188
The myth of Pacari Tambo 191
Cuycha, the rainbow 194
Chasca, the planet Venus 194
Worship of fire 195
Worship of the thunder 196
Worship of esculent plants 197
Worship of animals 198
The Huacas 199
Peruvian priesthood 202
The Virgins of the Sun 204
Punishment of faithless nuns 206
Independent parallelisms, illustrated by the "couvade" 208
LECTURE VI.
PERUVIAN CULTUS AND FESTIVALS.--MORALS AND THE FUTURE
LIFE.--CONCLUSIONS.
PAGE
Peruvian temples 215
Sacrifices 218
Columns of the Sun 222
Hymns 223
Religious dances 224
The four great festivals 225
Chasing the evil spirit 227
Occasional and minor festivals 229
Eclipses 230
Sorcerers and priests 230
Moral significance of the Peruvian religion 232
Communion, baptism and sacerdotal confession 233
Various ideas as to the future life 235
Supay, the god of the departed 237
Conversion of the Peruvians 239
Are the origins of the American civilizations to be sought in
the Old World? 241
Real significance and importance of analogies observed 243
Sacrifice 245
Three stages of religious faith: animistic nature-worship,
anthropomorphic polytheism and spiritual monotheism 246
The genesis of the temple 249
Primitive independence and subsequent mutual interpenetration
of religion and morals 250
Human nature invincibly religious 252
The guiding principle 254
Farewell 255
ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.
P. 16, _note_, under _Acosta_, add, "E[dward] G[rimstone]'s
translation was edited, with notes, for the Hakluyt Society, by
Clements R. Markham, in 1880."
P. 17, _note_, lines 4 and 5, to "English translation" add "in
epitome."
" lines 8 and 9, for "Ixtilxochitl" read "Ixtlilxochitl."
" line 7 from below, for "note" read "notes."
P. 32, line 10 from below, for "bases" read "basis."
P. 34, line 1, for "lama" read "llama."
P. 35, last line, insert "and" after "America."
P. 77, _note_, last line, for "caps." read "capp."
P. 92, line 9 from below, omit "to" before "which."
P. 113, _note_, last line, for "Chichemeca" read "Chichimeca."
P. 129, line 3, for "East to West" read "West to East."
P. 224, _note_, for "_Rivero y Tschudi_, l.c." read "_Rivero y
Tschudi_: Antigueedades Peruanas: Viena, 1851." N. B. An English
translation of this work by F. L. Hawks appeared at New York
in 1853.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTION.--CENTRAL AMERICA AND MEXICO. COMMON BASES OF CIVILIZATION
AND RELIGION.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
My first duty is to acknowledge the signal honour which the Hibbert
Trustees have done me in inviting me to follow such a series of eminent
men as the previous occupiers of this Chair, and to address you, in the
free and earnest spirit of truth-loving and impartial research, on those
great questions of religious history which so justly pre-occupy the
chosen spirits of European society. Our age is not, as is sometimes
said, an age of positive science and of industrial discoveries alone,
but also, and in a very high degree, an age of criticism and of history.
It is to history, indeed, more than to anything else, that it looks for
the lights which are to guide it in resolving the grave difficulties
presented by the problems of the hour, in politics, in organization, and
in social and religious life. Penetrated more deeply than the century
that preceded it by the truth that the development of humanity is not
arbitrary, that the law of continuity is no less rigorously applicable
to the successive evolutions of the human mind than to the animal and
vegetable transformations of the physical world, it perceives that the
present can be no other than the expansion of germs contained in the
past; it attempts to pierce to the very essence of spiritual realities
by investigating the methods and the laws of their historical
development; it strives, here as elsewhere, to separate the permanent
from the transient, the substance from the accident, and is urged on in
these laborious researches by no mere dilettante curiosity, but rather
by the hope of arriving at a more accurate knowledge of all that is
true, all that is truly precious, all that can claim, as the pure truth,
our deliberate adhesion and our love. And in the domain of Religion,
more especially, we can never lose our confidence that, if historical
research may sometimes compel us to sacrifice illusions, or even beliefs
that have been dear to us, it gives us in return the right to walk in
the paths of the Eternal with a firmer step, and reveals with growing
clearness the marvellous aspiration of humanity towards a supreme
reality, mysterious, nay incomprehensible, and yet in essential affinity
with itself, with its ideal, with its all that is purest and sublimest.
The history of religion is not only one of the branches of human
knowledge, but a prophecy as well. After having shown us whence we come
and the path we have trodden, it shadows forth the way we have yet to
go, or at the very least it effects the orientation by which we may know
in which direction it lies.
Gentlemen, in these Lectures I shall be loyal to the principles of
impartial scholarship to which I understand this Chair to be
consecrated. Expect neither theological controversy nor dogmatic
discussion of any kind from me. It is as a historian that I am here, and
as a historian I shall speak. Only let me say at once, that, while
retaining my own very marked preferences, I place religion itself, as a
faculty, an attribute, a tendency natural to the human mind, above all
the forms, even the most exalted, which it has assumed in time and
space. I can conceive a _Templum Serenum_ where shall meet in that love
of truth, which at bottom is but one of the forms of love of God, all
men of upright heart and pure will. To me, religion is a natural
property and tendency, and consequently an innate need of the human
spirit. That spirit, accidentally and in individual cases, may indeed be
deprived of it; but if so, it is incomplete, mutilated, crippled. But
observe that the recognition of religion itself (in distinction from the
varied forms it may assume), as a natural tendency and essential need of
the human mind, implies the reality of its object, even if that sacred
object should withdraw itself from our understanding behind an
impenetrable veil, even could we say nothing concerning it save this one
word: IT IS! For it would be irrational to the last degree to lay down
the existence of such a need and such a tendency, and yet believe that
the need corresponds to nothing, that the tendency has no goal.
Religious history, by bringing clearly into light the universality, the
persistency and the prodigious intensity of religion in human life, is
therefore, to my mind, one unbroken attestation to God.
And now it remains for me to express my lively regret that I am unable
to address you in your own tongue. I often read your authors: I profit
much by them. But I have emphatically not received the gift of tongues.
By such an audience as I am now addressing, I am sure to be understood
if I speak my mother-tongue; but were I to venture on mutilating yours,
I should instantly become completely unintelligible! Let me throw
myself, then, upon your kind indulgence.
I.
I am about to speak to you on a subject little known in general, though
it has already been studied very closely by specialists of great
merit--I mean the religions professed in Mexico and Peru when, in the
sixteenth century, a handful of Spanish adventurers achieved that
conquest, almost like a fairy tale, which still remains one of the most
extraordinary chapters of history. But I shall perhaps do well at the
outset briefly to explain the very special importance of these now
vanished religions.
The intrinsic interest of all the strange, original, dramatic and even
grotesque features that they present to the historian, is in itself
sufficiently great; for they possessed beliefs, institutions, and a
developed mythology, which would bear comparison with anything known to
antiquity in the Old World. But we have another very special and weighty
reason for interesting ourselves in these religions of a
demi-civilization, brusquely arrested in its development by the European
invasion.
To render this motive as clear as possible, allow me a supposition.
Suppose, then, that by a miracle of human genius we had found means of
transporting ourselves to one of the neighbouring planets, Mars or Venus
for example, and had found it to be inhabited, like our earth, by
intelligent beings. As soon as we had satisfied the first curiosity
excited by those physical and visible novelties which the planetary
differences themselves could not fail to produce, we should turn with
re-awakened interest to ask a host of such questions as the following:
Do these intelligent inhabitants of Mars or Venus reason and feel as we
do? Have they history? Have they religion? Have they politics, arts,
morals? And if it should happen that after due examination we found
ourselves able to answer all these questions affirmatively, can you not
imagine what interest there would be in comparing the history, politics,
arts, morals and religion of these beings with our own? And if we found
that the same fundamental principles, the same laws of evolution and
transformation, the same internal logic, had asserted itself in Mars, in
Venus and on the Earth, is it not clear that the fact would constitute a
grand confirmation of our theories as to the fundamental identity of
spiritual being, the conditions of its individual and collective
genesis--in a word, the universal character of the laws of mind?
And now consider this. For the Europeans of the early sixteenth century,
America, especially continental America, was absolutely equivalent to
another planet upon which, thanks to the presaging genius of Christopher
Columbus, the men of the Old World had at last set foot. At first they
only found certain islands inhabited by men of another type and another
colour than their own, still close upon the savage state. But before
long they had reason to suspect that immense regions stretched to the
west of the archipelago of the Antilles; they ventured ashore, and
returned with a vague notion that there existed in the interior of the
unknown continent mighty empires, whose wealth and military organization
severed them widely indeed from the poor tribes of St. Domingo or Cuba,
whom they had already discovered and had so cruelly oppressed. It was
then that a bold captain conceived the apparently insane project of
setting out with a few hundred men to conquer what passed for the
richest and most powerful of these empires. His success demanded not
only all his courage, but all his cold cruelty and absolute
unscrupulousness, together with those favours which fortune sometimes
reserves for audacity. At any rate he succeeded, and the rumours that
had inflamed his imagination turned out to be true. On his way he came
upon great cities, upon admirably cultivated lands, upon a complete
social and military organization. He saw an unknown religion display
itself before his eyes. There were temples, sacrifices, magnificent
ceremonies. There were priests, there were convents, there were monks
and nuns. To his profound amazement, he noticed the cross carved upon a
great number of religious edifices, and saw a goddess who bore her
infant in her arms. The natives had rites which closely recalled the
Christian baptism and the Christian communion. As for our captain,
neither he nor his contemporaries could see anything in all this parade
of a religion, now so closely approaching, now so utterly remote, from
their own, but a gigantic ruse of the devil, who had led these unhappy
natives astray in order to secure their worship. But for us, who know
that the devil cannot help us to the genesis of ancient mythologies and
ancient religions--who know likewise that the social and religious
development of Central America was in the strictest sense native and
original, and that all attempts to bring it into connection with a
supposed earlier intercourse with Asia or Europe have failed--the
question presents itself under a very different aspect. In our Old
World, the natural religious development of man has produced myths and
mythologies, sacrificial rites and priesthoods, temples, ascetics, gods
and goddesses; and on the basis of the Old World's experience we might
already feel entitled to say, "Such are the steps and stages of
religious evolution; such were the processes of the human spirit before
the appearance of the higher religions which are in some sort grafted
upon their elder sisters, and have in their turn absorbed or
spiritualized them." But there would still be room to ask whether all
this development had been natural and spontaneous, whether successive
imitations linking one contiguous people to another had not transformed
some local and isolated phenomenon into an apparently general and
international fact--much as took place with the use of tea or
cotton--without our being compelled to recognize any necessary law of
human development in it. But what answer is possible to the argument
furnished by the discovery of the new planet--I mean to say of America?
How can we resist this evidence that the whole organism of mythologies,
gods, goddesses, sacrifices, temples and priesthoods, while varying
enormously from race to race and from nation to nation, yet, wherever
human beings are found, develops itself under the same laws, the same
principles and the same methods of deduction; that, in a word, given
human nature anywhere, its religious development is reared on the same
identical bases and passes through the same phases?
Mr. Max Mueller, one of my most honoured masters, and one of those who
have best deserved the gratitude of the learned world, has declared,
with equal justice and penetration, in his Preface to Mr. Wyatt Gill's
"Myths and Songs," that the possibility of studying the Polynesian
mythology is to the historian what an opportunity of spending a time in
the midst of the plesiosauri and the megatherions would be to the
zoologist, or of walking in the shade of the vast arborescent ferns that
lie buried under our present soil to the botanist. Polynesian mythology
has in fact preserved, down to our own day, the pre-historic ages. And,
similarly, the religions of Mexico and Peru (for the empire of the Incas
held the same surprises and the same lessons in store for its explorers
as that of Montezuma had done) has enabled history to carry to the
point of demonstration its fundamental thesis of the natural
development, in subjection to fixed laws, of the religious tendency in
man. All those curious resemblances, amidst the differences which we
shall also bring out, between the religious history of the New World and
that of the Old, are not at bottom any more extraordinary than the fact
that, in spite of the differences of physical type which separated the
natives from their conquerors, they none the less saw with eyes, walked
on feet, ate with a mouth and digested with a stomach.
* * * * *
We shall begin our study with Mexico. But a few preliminary
ethnographical remarks are indispensable. I spare you the catalogue of
the numerous sources and documents from which a detailed knowledge of
the Mexican religion may be drawn.[1] Such a list is in place in a book
rather than in a lecture. I will only direct your attention to the noble
collection made in 1830 by one of your own compatriots, Lord
Kingsborough, under the title of "Antiquities of Mexico," a work of
extreme importance, which reproduces, in facsimile or engravings, the
monuments and ruins of ancient Mexico;[2] and the very remarkable work
of Mr. H. H. Bancroft, "Native Races of the Pacific States of North
America."[3]
II.
The region with which we are now to occupy ourselves comprises the space
bounded on the South by the Isthmus of Panama, washed East and West by
the oceans, and determined, roughly speaking, towards the North by a
line starting from the head of the Gulf of California, and sweeping
round to the mouths of the Mississippi with a curve that takes in
Arizona and Southern Texas. In our day, this southern portion of North
America is broken into two great divisions, the first and most southern
of which is known collectively as Central America, and embraces the
republics of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, San Salvador
and Panama. The great peninsula of Yucatan, which is now Mexican,
formerly belonged to this group of Central American peoples. The second
portion of the territory we are to study corresponds to the present
republic of Mexico. I shall presently explain the sense in which it
might be called the Mexican empire in the time of Fernando Cortes. For
the present, let me ask you to remember that we are now about to speak,
in a general and preliminary manner, of the region which pretty closely
corresponds to the present Central America and Mexico.
To begin with, we treat these two districts as a single whole, because
the Europeans found them inhabited by a race which was divided, it is
true, into several varieties, but was distinguished clearly from the
Red-skins on the North, and still more from the Eskimos, and alone of
the native races of North America had proved itself capable of rising by
its own strength to a veritable civilization. The general physical type
of the race is marked by a very brown skin, a medium stature, low brow,
black coarse hair, prominent jaw, heavy lips, thick eyebrows, and a
nose generally large and often hooked. The noble families as a rule had
a clearer complexion. The women are thick-set and squab, but not without
grace in their movements. In their youth they are sometimes very pretty,
but they fade early. We must leave it to ethnological specialists to
decide whether this type is not the result of previous crossings.
So much is certain, that at an epoch the date of which it is impossible
to fix, but which must have been remote, this race, cut off from all the
world by the sea and the profoundest savagery, developed a civilization
_sui generis_, to which the traditional reminiscences of the natives
and a series of most remarkable ruins, discovered especially in Central
America, bear witness. For it is in this southern district that we find
the monumental ruins of Palenque, of Chiapa, of Uxmal, of Utatlan, and
of other places, the list of which has again begun to receive additions
in recent years. When the Spaniards conquered the New World, the centre
of this civilization had shifted further north, to Mexico proper, to the
city of Mexico, to Tezcuco and to Cholula. But the consciousness that
the Mexican civilization was affiliated to that of the isthmic region
had by no means been lost. It was a nation or race called Maya, the name
of which seems to indicate that it considered itself indigenous, and the
proper centre of which lay in Yucatan, that produced this American
civilization--capable of organizing states and priesthoods, of rearing
immense palaces, of carving stone in great perfection and with a true
artistic sense, and of realizing a high degree of physical well-being.
There is reason to believe, however, that this civilization, resembling
in some respects that of ancient Canaan, had more refinement in its
pursuit of material comfort than vigour in its morality. A certain
effeminacy, and even the endemic practice of odious vices, appears to
have early enervated it. When the Spaniards arrived in America, wars and
devastating invasions had shattered the old and powerful monarchies of
the central region and reduced the great monuments of antiquity to
ruins, and that too so long ago that the natives themselves, while
retaining a certain civilization, had lost all memory of the ancient
cities and the ancient palaces that the Europeans rescued from oblivion.
We may still see figured amongst the monuments of Mexico those beautiful
ruins of Palenque, where stretches a superb gallery, vaulted with the
broad ogives that recal the Moorish architecture of the Alhambra; while
at Tehuantepec an immense temple has been discovered, hollowed out of a
huge rock, like certain temples in India. The cultivation of maize was
to this region what that of wheat was to Egypt and Mesopotamia, or of
rice to India and China, the material condition, namely, of a precocious
civilization. For, as has been remarked, the primitive civilizations
could not be developed except where an abundant cereal raised man above
immediate anxiety for his subsistence, and rescued him from the
all-engrossing fatigues and the dangerous uncertainties of the hunter's
life.
This Maya race, having adopted the agricultural and sedentary life,
multiplied so greatly as to send out many swarms of colonists towards
the North, where the _Nahuas_, that is to say, "the skilled ones" or
"experts" (for so the emigrants from the Maya land were called), found
men of the same race as themselves, to whom they imparted their superior
knowledge. They kept on pushing northwards, established themselves on
the great plateau of Anahuac, or "lake country," where the city of
Mexico is situated, and advanced up to the somewhat indefinite limit
opposed to their progress by the Red-skins. This migratory movement
towards the North was evidently not the affair of a day. It must have
continued for centuries; and during its process the Maya civilization
may have experienced great developments and undergone numerous
modifications; so that, without venturing to pronounce categorically
upon a problem yet unsolved, I should myself be inclined to ascribe to
a population, which either consisted of bands of emigrant Mayas or was
affected by this Nahua movement, those "Mounds" which still throw their
galling defiance at the modern methods of research, powerless to explain
their origin in regions which have since been under the reign of the
most absolute savagery.
However this may be, the movement by which in a remote antiquity the
peoples of Central America ascended towards the North, carrying with
them their relative civilization to Mexico and even beyond, was reversed
at the epoch of our Middle Ages by a migration in the opposite
direction. In this case it was the peoples of the northern regions that
tended to beat back upon the South. They invaded, conquered and brought
into subjection the peoples who had established themselves along the
path followed by the previous migrations; and it is probably to
invasions of this description that we must ascribe the fall of the
ancient Maya society of the isthmic region. But the civilization of
which it had sown the germs was not dead. Nay, the peoples who descended
upon the South had in great measure themselves adopted it; and in the
invaded districts there remained groups and nuclei of Nahua populations
who maintained its principles, its arts and its spirit, to which their
conquerors readily conformed. The last conquerors had been established
as masters in the Mexican district for more than a century when the
Spaniards arrived there. They were the _Aztecs_. They had conquered or
shattered what was called the _Chichimec_ empire, which in its turn had
destroyed, some centuries earlier, the _Toltec_ empire. But it would be
a mistake to think of three successive empires, Toltec, Chichimec and
Aztec, one supplanting the other in the same way as the Frankish empire,
for example, took the place of that of Rome, which in its turn had
replaced divers others more ancient yet. What really took place was what
follows.
The prolonged migrations of the Nahuas towards the North had not spread
civilization uniformly amongst all the tribes encountered on the route.
Thus, down to the sixteenth century, there still existed in the heart of
Mexico tribes very little removed from the savage state, such as the
Otomis or "wanderers;" whereas, in other districts, the Nahuas had
established themselves on a footing of acknowledged supremacy and
developed a brilliant civilization. Thus they founded at the extreme
north of the present Mexico the ancient city of Tulan or Tullan, the
name of which passed into that of its inhabitants, the _Toltecs_, and
this latter, in its turn, became the designation of everything graceful,
elegant, artistically refined and beautiful. Ethnographically, it simply
indicates the most brilliant foci of the civilization imported from
Central America. In fact, there never was a Toltec empire at all, but
simply a confederation of the three cities of Tullan, Colhuacan and
Otompan, all of which may be regarded as Toltec in the social sense
which I have just described. Many other small states existed outside
this confederation. It was destroyed by the revolt or invasion of more
northern tribes, hitherto held in vassalage and looked down upon as
belonging to a lower level of culture and manners. These tribes received
or assumed the name of _Chichimecs_ or "dogs," which may have been a
term of contempt converted into a title of honour, like that of the
_Gueux_ of the Low Countries. Thus arose a Chichimec confederation, of
which Colhuacan (the name given for a time to Tezcuco), Azcapulzalco,
the capital of the Tepanecs, and Tlacopan, were the principal cities. At
Tezcuco the Toltec element was still powerful. Cholula, a sacred city,
remained essentially Toltec, and in general the Chichimecs readily
adopted the superior civilization of the Toltecs. This was so much the
case that Tezcuco became the seat of an intellectual and artistic
development, in virtue of which the Europeans called it the Athens of
Mexico. It was from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, according
to the historians, that what may be called the Chichimec era lasted.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Aztecs--that is to say
_the white flamingos_ or _herons_ (from _aztatl_), the last comers from
the North, who had long been a poor and wretched tribe, and on reaching
Anahuac had been obliged to accept the suzerainty of Tezcuco--began to
assume great importance. They had founded, under the name of
Tenochtitlan, upon an island that is now united to the mainland, the
city which was afterwards called Mexico. But originally the name of
Mexico belonged to the quarter of the city which was dedicated to the
god of war, Mextli. At once warlike and commercial, the Aztecs grew in
numbers, wealth and military power; they saved Tezcuco from the dominion
of the Tepanecs, who tried to bring the whole Chichimec confederation
into subjection; presently they threw off all vassalage, and in the
fifteenth century they stood at the head of the new confederation which
took the place of that of the Chichimecs, and of which Mexico, Tezcuco
and Tlacopan (or Tacuba), were the three capitals.
There was no Mexican empire, then, at the moment when Fernando Cortes
disembarked near Vera Cruz, but there was a federation. On certain days
of religious festivity a solemn public dance was celebrated in Mexico,
in which the sovereign families of the three states, together with their
subjects of the highest rank, took part. It began at noon before the
palace of the Mexican king. They stood three and three. The king of
Mexico led the dance, holding with his right hand the king of Tezcuco,
and with his left the king of Tlacopan, and the three confederate
sovereigns or emperors thus symbolized for several hours the union of
their three states by the harmonious cadence of their movements.[4]
III.
The widely-spread error that makes Montezuma, the Mexican sovereign that
received Fernando Cortes, the absolute master of the whole district of
the present Mexico, is explained by the fact, that of the three
confederate states that of the Aztecs was by far the strongest, most
warlike and most dreaded. It was constantly extending its dominion by
means of a numerous, disciplined and admirably organized army, and
little by little the other two states were constantly approaching the
condition of vassalage. The Aztecs were no more recalcitrant to
civilization than the Chichimecs, but they were ruder, more
matter-of-fact and more cruel. They did no sacrifices to the Toltec
graces, but developed their civilization exclusively on its utilitarian
and practical side. They were no artists, but essentially warriors and
merchants. And even their merchants were often at the same time spies
whom the kings of Mexico sent into the countries they coveted, to study
their resources, their strength and their weakness. Their yoke was hard.
They raised heavy tributes. Their policy was one of extreme
centralization, and, without destroying the religion of the peoples
conquered by their arms, they imposed upon them the worship and the
supremacy of their own national deities. Their warlike expeditions bore
a pronounced religious character. The priests marched at the head of the
soldiers, and bore Aztec idols on their backs. On the eve of a battle
they kindled fresh fire by the friction of wood; and it was they who
gave the signal of attack. These wars had pillage and conquest as their
object, but also and very specially the capture of victims to sacrifice
to the Aztec gods. For the Aztecs pushed the superstitious practice of
human sacrifice to absolute frenzy. It was to these horrible sacrifices
that they attributed their successes in war and the prosperity of their
empire. If they experienced a check or had suffered any disaster, they
redoubled their blood-stained offerings. But note this trait, so
essentially pagan and in such perfect accord with the polytheistic ideas
of the ancient world--they sacrificed to the gods of the conquered
country too, to show them that it was not against them they were
contending, and that the new regime would not rob them of the homage to
which they were accustomed. The Aztec deities were not _jealous_. They
confined themselves to vindicating their own pre-eminence. After each
fresh conquest, the Aztecs raised a temple at Mexico bearing the name of
the conquered country, and thither they transported natives of the place
to carry on the worship after their own customs. It seems that they did
not consider even this precaution enough; for they constructed a special
edifice near the great temple of Mexico, where the supreme deities of
the Aztec people were enthroned, and there they shut up the idols of the
conquered countries. This was to prevent their escape, should the desire
come over them to return to their own peoples and help them to
revolt.[5]
All this will explain how it was that Fernando Cortes found numerous
allies against Montezuma's despotism amongst the native peoples. For it
is an error, generally received indeed, but contradicted by history,
that the Spanish captain decided the fate of so redoubtable an empire,
and of a city so vigorously defended as Mexico, with the sole aid of his
thousand Europeans.
For the rest, we are forced to acknowledge that the Aztecs had developed
their civilization, in its political and material aspects, in a way that
does the greatest credit to their sagacity. Property was organized on
the individual and hereditary basis for the noble families, and on the
collective basis for the people, divided into communities. The taxes
were raised in kind, according to fixed rules. Numbers of slaves were
charged with the most laborious kinds of work. The merchants, assembled
in the cities, formed a veritable _tiers-etat_ which exercised a growing
political influence. There were markets, the abundance and wealth of
which stupefied the Spaniards. The luxury of the court and of the great
families was dazzling. No one dared to address the sovereign save with
lowered voice, and--strange custom in our eyes!--no one appeared before
him save with naked feet and clad in sordid garments, in sign of
humility. Mexico had been joined to the mainland by causeways, along
which an aqueduct conveyed the pure waters of distant springs to the
city. The irrigation works in the country were numerous and in good
repair. The streets were cleansed by day and lighted at night,
advantages in which none of the European capitals rejoiced in the
sixteenth century. And finally, for we cannot dwell indefinitely upon
this subject, let us note the excellent roads that stretched from Mexico
to the limits of the Aztec empire and the confederated states. Along
these roads the sovereigns of Mexico had established, at intervals of
two leagues, courier posts for the transmission of important news to
them. Montezuma heard of the disembarkment of Fernando Cortes three days
after it took place.
And now imagine that this people was always averse to navigation--was
ignorant of use of iron, knowing only of gold, silver and copper--had no
beast of traction or burden, neither horse, nor ass, nor camel, nor
elephant, nor even the llama of Peru--was without writing (for though we
find a kind of hieroglyph on the monuments of Mexico and Central
America, yet the system was not of the smallest avail for ordinary
life)--and, finally, had no money except an inconsiderable number of
silver crosses and cacao berries, the mass of exchanges being effected
by barter! On the other hand, they worked in stone with admirable skill.
In their knives and lance and arrow heads, made of obsidian, they
achieved remarkable perfection, and they excelled in the art of
supplying the place of writing by pictures, painted on a kind of aloe
paper or on cotton stuffs, representing the persons or things as to
which they desired to convey information.
Such, then, is the singular people that Spain was destined to conquer in
the sixteenth century, and whose civilization, though modified by the
special Aztec spirit, rested after all upon the same bases that had
sustained the more ancient civilization of Central America. And this is
equally true of the religion, which, with all the varieties impressed
upon it by the special genius or inclinations of the diverse peoples,
reveals itself as resting upon one common basis, from the Isthmus of
Panama to the Gulf of California and the mouths of the Rio del Norte.
IV.
One of the fundamental traits of this regional religion, then, is the
pre-eminence of the Sun, regarded as a personal and animated being, over
all other divinities. At Guatemala, amongst the Lacandones, he was
adored directly, without any images. Amongst their neighbours the Itzas,
not far from Vera Paz, he was represented as a round human head
encircled by diverging rays and with a great open mouth. This symbol,
indeed, was very widely spread in all that region. Often the Sun is
represented putting out his tongue, which means that he lives and
speaks. For in the American hieroglyphics, a protruded tongue, or a
tongue placed by the side of any object, is the emblem of life. A
mountain with a tongue represents a volcano. The Sun was generally
associated with the Moon as spouse, and they were called _Grandfather_
and _Grandmother_. In Central America, and in the territory of Mexico,
may be observed a number of stone columns which are likewise statues;
but the head is generally in the middle, and is so overlaid with
ornaments or attributes, that it is not very easy to discover it. These
are _Sun-columns_. As he traced the shadow of these monoliths upon the
soil day after day, the Sun appeared to be caressing them, loving them,
taking them as his fellow-workers in measuring the time. These same
columns were also symbols of fructifying power. Often the Sun has a
child, who is no other than a doublet of himself, but conceived in human
form as the civilizer, legislator and conqueror, bearing diverse names
according to the peoples whose hero-god and first king he is represented
as being. And for that matter, if we had but the time, we might long
dwell on the myths of Yucatan, of Guatemala (amongst the Quiches), of
Honduras, and of Nicaragua. By the side of the Sun and Moon, grandfather
and grandmother, there were a number of great and small deities (some of
them extremely vicious), and amongst others a god of rain, who was
called Tohil by the Quiches and Tlaloc at Mexico, where he took his
place amongst the most revered deities. His name signifies "noise,"
"rumbling." Amongst the Quiches he had a great temple at Utatlan,
pyramidal in form, like all others in this region of the world, where he
was the object of a "perpetual adoration" offered him by groups of from
thirteen to eighteen worshippers, who relieved each other in relays day
and night.
Human sacrifice was practised by all these peoples, though not to such
an extent as amongst the Aztecs, for they only resorted to it on rare
occasions. It was especially girls that they immolated, with the idea of
giving brides to the gods. They were to exercise their conjugal
influence in favourably disposing their divine consorts towards the
sacrificers. In this connection we find a tragi-comic story of a young
victim whose forced marriage was not in the least to her taste, and who
threatened to pronounce the most terrible maledictions from heaven upon
her slaughterers. Her threats had so much effect that they let her go,
and procured another and less recalcitrant bride for the deity.[6]
Finally, we will mention a most characteristic deity (whom we shall
presently recognize at Mexico under yet another name), variously known
as Cuculkan (bird-serpent), Gucumatz (feathered-serpent),
Hurakan--whence our "hurricane"--Votan (serpent), &c. He is always a
serpent, and generally feathered or flying. He is a personification of
the wind, especially of the east wind, which brings the fertilizing
rains in that district. Almost everywhere he is credited with gentle and
beneficent dispositions, and therefore with a certain hostility to human
sacrifice. It was this deity, in one of his forms, who was worshipped in
the sacred island of Cozumel, situated close to Yucatan, to which
pilgrimages were made from great distances. It was there that the
Spaniards, to their great surprise, first observed a cross surmounting
the temple of this god of the wind. This was the starting-point of the
legend according to which the Apostle Thomas had of old evangelized
America. It is a pure illusion. The pagan cross of Central America and
Mexico is nothing whatever but the symbol of the four cardinal points of
the compass from which blow the four chief winds.
Such is the common religious basis, which we have simply sketched in its
most general outlines, and upon which the more elaborate and sombre
religion of the Aztecs, which we shall examine at our next meeting, was
reared. Pray observe that we find in this group of connected beliefs and
worships something quite analogous to the polytheism of the ancient
world. The only notable difference is, that the god of Heaven, Dyaus,
Varuna, Zeus, Ahura Mazda, or (in China) Tien, does not occupy the same
pre-eminent place in the American mythology that he takes in its
European and Asiatic counterparts. For the rest, the processes of the
human spirit are absolutely identical in the two continents. In both
alike it is the phenomena of nature, regarded as animated and conscious,
that wake and stimulate the religious sentiment and become the objects
of the adoration of man. At the same time, and in virtue of the same
process of internal logic, these personified beings come to be regarded
more and more as possessed of a nature superior in power indeed, but in
all other respects closely conforming, to that of man. If
nature-worship, with the animism that it engenders, shapes the first
law to which nascent religion submits in the human race,
anthropomorphism furnishes the second, disengaging itself ever more and
more completely from the zoomorphism which generally serves as an
intermediary. This is so _everywhere_. And thus we may safely leave to
ethnologists the task of deciding whether the whole human race descends
from one original couple or from many; for, spiritually speaking,
humanity in any case is one. It is one same spirit that animates it and
is developed in it; and this, the incontestable unity of our race, is
likewise the only unity we need care to insist on. Let us recognize it,
then, since indeed it imposes itself upon us, and let us confess that
the gospel did but anticipate the last word of science in proclaiming
universal fraternity.
And here, Gentlemen, we reach one of those grand generalizations which
must finally win over even those who are still inclined to distrust the
philosophical history of religions as a study that destroys the most
precious possessions of humanity. In setting forth the intellectual and
moral unity of mankind, everywhere directed by the same successive
evolutions and the same spiritual laws, it brings into light the great
principle of _human brotherhood_. In demonstrating that these
evolutions, in spite of all the influences of ignorance, of selfishness
and of grossness, converge towards a sublime, ideal goal, and are no
other than the mysterious but mighty and unbroken attraction to that
unfathomable Power of which the universe is the visible expression, it
founds on a basis of reason the august sentiment of the _divine
fatherhood_. Brother-men and one Father-God!--what more does the thinker
need to raise the dignity of our nature, the promises of the future, the
sublimity of our destiny, into a region where the inconstant waves of a
superficial criticism can never reach them? Such is the vestibule of the
eternal Temple; and in approaching the sanctuary--albeit I may not know
the very title by which best to call the Deity who reigns in it--I bow
my head with that union of humility and of filial trust which
constitutes the pure essence of religion.
But from these general considerations we must return to our more
immediate subject. At our next meeting, Gentlemen, we are to study the
special beliefs and mythology of ancient Mexico.
LECTURE II.
THE DEITIES AND MYTHS OF MEXICO.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
It will be my task to-day to give an account of the Mexican mythology
and religion, resting as it does on the foundation common to the peoples
of Central America, but inspired by the sombre, utilitarian,
matter-of-fact, yet vigorous and earnest, genius of the Aztecs. You will
remember that this name belongs to the warlike and commercial people
that enjoyed, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a military and
political supremacy in the region that is now called Mexico, after the
Aztec capital of that name.
I.
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 formulae. 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.