justification of my remark that we find in him the pendant of those
deities, serpents and birds in one, who were adored in Central America,
and who answered, like Quetzalcoatl, to the idea of the Atlantic wind.
He was, in truth, the ancient deity that the Nahuas or Mayas of the
civilized immigrations brought with them when they settled in Anahuac
and still further North. Like all the other gods of these regions,
Quetzalcoatl had assumed the human shape more and more completely. We
still possess, especially in the Trocadero Museum at Paris, great blocks
of stone on which he is represented as a serpent covered with feathers,
coiled up and sleeping till the time comes for him to wake. But there
are also statues of him in human form, save that his body is surmounted
by a bird's head, with the tongue projected. Now in the Mexican
hieroglyphie this bird's head, with the tongue put out, is no other than
the symbol of the wind. Hence, too, his names of _Tohil_ "the hummer" or
"the whisperer," _Ehecatl_ "the breeze," _Nauihehecatl_ "the lord of the
four winds," &c. The naturalistic meaning of Quetzalcoatl, then, cannot
admit of the smallest doubt.
It is probably to the more gentle and humane religious tendency which
was kept alive by the priesthood of this deity, that we must attribute
the attempted reform of the king of Tezcuco, Netzalhuatcoyotl (the
fasting coyote), who has been called the Mexican Solomon. He was a poet
and philosopher as well as king, and had no love either of idolatry or
of sanguinary sacrifices. He had a great pyramidal teocalli of nine
stages erected in his capital for the worship of the god of heaven, to
whom he brought no offerings except flowers and perfumes. He died in
1472, and, as far as we can see, his reformation made no progress. The
ever-increasing preponderance of the Aztecs was as unfavourable as
possible to this humane and spiritual tendency in religion.[15] Yet one
loves to dwell upon the fact, that even in the midst of a religion
steeped in blood, a protest was inspired by the sentiment of humanity,
linked, as it should always be, with the progress of religious thought.
III.
We must now proceed with our review of the Mexican deities, but I must
be content with indicating the most important amongst them; for without
admitting, with Gomara--who registered many names and epithets belonging
to one and the same divinity as indicating so many distinct
beings--that their number rose to two thousand, we find that the most
moderate estimate of the historians raises them to two hundred and
sixty. We shall confine ourselves, then, to the most significant.
The importance of rain in the regions of Mexico, so marked in the myths
we have already considered, prepares us to find amongst the great gods
the figure of Tlaloc, whose name signifies "the nourisher," and who was
the god of rain. He was believed to reside in the mountains, whence he
sent the clouds. He was also the god of fecundity. Lightning and thunder
were amongst his attributes, and his character was no more amiable than
that of the Mexican deities in general. His cultus was extremely cruel.
Numbers of children were sacrificed to him. His statues were cut in a
greenish white stone, of the colour of water. In one hand he held a
sceptre, the symbol of lightning; in the other, a thunderbolt. He was a
cyclops; that is to say, he had but one eye, which shows that he must be
ultimately identified as an ancient personification of the rainy sky,
whose one eye is the sun. His huge mouth, garnished with crimson teeth,
was always open, to signify his greed and his sanguinary tastes. His
wife was _Chalchihuitlicue_, "the lady Chalchihuit," whose name is
identical with that of a soft green jade stone that was much valued in
Mexico. Her numerous offspring, the Tlalocs, probably represent the
clouds. Side by side with the hideous sacrifices of which Tlaloc's
festival was the occasion, we may note the grotesque ceremony in which
his priests flung themselves pell-mell into a pond, imitating the action
and the note of frogs. This is but one of a thousand proofs that in the
rites intended to conciliate the nature-gods, it was thought well to
reproduce in mimicry the actions of those creatures who were supposed to
be their favourites or chosen servants. The frogs were manifestly loved
by the god of the waters, and to secure his good graces his priests, as
was but natural, transformed themselves into frogs likewise. It was with
this cultus especially that the symbol of the Mexican cross was
connected, as indicating the four points of the horizon from which the
wind might blow.
_Centeotl_ was another great deity, a kind of Mexican Ceres or Demeter.
She was the goddess of Agriculture, and very specially of maize. Indeed,
her name signifies "maize-goddess," being derived from _centli_ (maize)
and _teotl_ (divine being). Sometimes, however, inasmuch as this goddess
had a son who bore the same name as herself, Centeotl stands for a male
deity. The female deity is often represented with a child in her arms,
like a Madonna. This child, who is no other than the maize itself, grows
up, becomes an adult god, and is the masculine Centeotl. The feminine
Centeotl, moreover, bears many other names, such as _Tonantzin_ (our
revered mother), _Cihuatcoatl_ (lady serpent), and very often _Toci_ or
_Tocitzin_ (our grandmother). She was sometimes represented in the form
of a frog, the symbol of the moistened earth, with a host of mouths or
breasts on her body. She had also a daughter, _Xilonen_, the young
maize-ear, corresponding to the Persephone or Kore of the Greeks. Her
face was painted yellow, the colour of the maize. Her character, at
least amongst the Aztecs, had nothing idyllic about it, and we shall
have to return presently to the frightful sacrifices which were
celebrated in her honour.
Next comes the god of Fire, _Xiuhtecutli_ (the Lord Fire), a very
ancient deity, as we see by one of his many surnames, _Huehueteotl_ (the
old god). He is represented naked, with his chin blackened, with a
head-dress of green feathers, carrying on his back a kind of serpent
with yellow feathers, thus combining the different fire colours. And
inasmuch as he looked across a disk of gold, called "the looking-plate,"
we may ask whether his primitive significance was not very closely
allied to that of Tezcatlipoca, the shining mirror of the cold season.
Sacrifice was offered to him daily. In every house the first libation
and the first morsel of bread were consecrated to him. And finally, as
an instance of the astounding resemblance that is forced upon our
attention between the religious development of the Old World and that of
the New, only conceive that in Mexico, as in ancient Iran and other
countries of Asia and Europe, the fire in every house must be
extinguished on a certain day in every year, and the priest of
Xiuhtecutli kindled fire anew by friction before the statue of his god.
You are aware that this rite, with which so many customs and
superstitions are connected, rests on the idea that Fire is a divine
being, of celestial and pure origin, which is shut up in the wood, and
which is contaminated in the long run by contact with men and with human
affairs. Hence it follows that in order for it to retain its virtues, to
continue to act as a purifier and to spread its blessings amongst men,
it must be brought down anew, from time to time, from its divine
source.[16]
The Aztecs also had a Venus, a goddess of Love, who bore the name of
_Tlazolteotl_ (the goddess of Sensuality).[17] At Tlascala she was known
by the more elegant name of _Xochiquetzal_ (the flowery plume). She
lived in heaven, in a beautiful garden, spinning and embroidering,
surrounded by dwarfs and buffoons, whom she kept for her amusement. We
hear of a battle of the gods of which she was the object. Though the
wife of Tlaloc, she was loved and carried off by Tezcatlipoca. This
probably gives us the clue to her mythic origin. She must have been the
aquatic vegetation of the marsh lands, possessed by the god of waters,
till the sun dries her up and she disappears. The legend about her is
not very edifying. It was she--to mention only a single feat--who
prevailed over the pious hermit Yappan, when he had victoriously
resisted all other temptations. After his fall he was changed into a
scorpion; and that is why the scorpion, full of wrath at the memory of
his fall and fleeing the daylight, is so poisonous and lives hidden
under stones.[18]
We have still to mention _Mixcoatl_, the cloud-serpent, whose name
survives to our day as the designation of water-spouts in Mexico, and
who was specially worshipped by the still almost savage populations of
the secluded mountain districts,--_Omacatl_, "the double reed," a kind
of Momus, the god of good cheer, who may very well be a secondary form
of Tlaloc, and who avenged himself, when defrauded of due homage, by
interspersing hairs and other disagreeable objects amongst the
viands,--_Ixtlilton_, "the brown," a sort of Esculapius, the healing
god, whose priest concocted a blackish liquid that passed as an
efficacious remedy for every kind of disease,--_Yacatecutli_, "the lord
guide," the god of travellers and of commerce, whose ordinary symbol was
the stick with a carved handle carried by the Mexicans when on a
journey, who was sedulously worshipped by the commercial and middle
classes of Mexico, and in connection with whom we may note that every
Mexican, when travelling, would be careful to fix his stick in the
ground every evening and pay his respectful devotions to it,[19]--and,
finally, _Xipe_, "the bald," or "the flayed," the god of goldsmiths,
probably another form of Uitzilopochtli (whose festival coincided with
his), deriving his name apparently from the polishing process to which
gold (no doubt regarded as belonging to the substance of the sun) had to
undergo to give it the required brilliance, and to whose hideous cultus
we shall have to return in our next Lecture.
I must now be brief, and will only speak further of the _Tepitoton_,
that is to say, the "little tiny ones," minute domestic idols, the
number of which was incalculable. They insensibly lower to the level of
animism and fetishism that religion which, as we have seen, bears
comparison in its grander aspects with the most renowned mythologies of
the ancient world. I must, however, allow myself a few words on the god
_Mictlan_, the Mexican Hades or Pluto. His name properly signifies
"region of the North;" but inasmuch as the North was regarded as the
country of mist, of barrenness and of death, his name easily passed into
the designation of the subterranean country of the dead. The Germanic
_Helle_ has a similar history, for it was first localized in the wintry
North and then carried underground. Mictlan, like Hades, was used as a
name alike for the sojourn and for the god of the dead. This deity had a
consort who bore divers names, and he also had at his command a number
of genii or servants, called _Tzitzimitles_, a sort of malicious demons
held in great dread by the living. Of course both Mictlan and his wives
are always represented under a hideous aspect, with huge open mouths, or
rather jaws, often in the act of devouring an infant.[20]
At last we have done! In the next Lecture we shall penetrate to the very
heart of this singular religion, as we discuss its terrible sacrifices,
its institutions, and its doctrines concerning this world and the life
to come. And here, again, we shall find cause for amazement in the
striking analogies it presents to the rites and institutions of other
religions much nearer home. Meanwhile, observe that in examining the
purely mythological portion of the subject which we have passed in
review to-day, we have seen that there is not a single law manifested by
the mythologies of the ancient world, which had not its parallel
manifestations in Mexico before it was discovered by the Europeans. The
great gods, derived from a dramatized nature--animism, with the
fetishism that springs from it, occupying the basement, if I may so
express myself, beneath these mythological conceptions--in the midst of
all a tendency manifested from time to time towards a purer and more
spiritual conception of the adorable Being--all re-appears and all is
combined in Mexico, even down to something like an incarnation, and the
hope of the coming of the god of justice and of goodness who will
restore all things. Indeed, I know not where else one could look for so
complete a resume of what has constituted in all places, now the
smallness and wretchedness, now the grandeur and nobleness, of that
incomprehensible and irresistible factor of human nature which we call
_religion_. The "eternally religious" element in man had stamped its
mark upon the unknown Mexico as upon all other lands; and when at last
it was discovered, evidence might have been found, had men been able to
appreciate it, that there too, however frightfully misinterpreted, the
Divine breath had been felt.
It is the spiritually-minded who must learn the art of discerning the
spirit wherever it reveals itself; and when the horrors rise up before
us of which religion has more than once in the course of history been
the cause or the pretext, and we are almost tempted to ask whether this
attribute of human nature has really worked more good than ill in the
destinies of our race, we may remember that the same question might be
asked of all the proudest attributes of our humanity. Take polity or the
art of governing human societies. To what monstrous aberrations has it
not given birth! Take science. Through what lamentable and woful errors
has it not pursued its way! Take art. How gross were its beginnings, and
how often has it served, not to elevate man, but to stimulate his vilest
and most degrading passions! Yet, who would wish to live without
government, science or art?
Let us apply the same test to religion. The horrors it has caused cannot
weigh against the final and overmastering good which it produces; and
its annals, too often written in blood, should teach us how to guide it,
how to purify it from all that corrupts and debases it. We shall see at
the close of our Lectures what that directing, normalizing, purifying
principle is that must hold the helm of religion and guide it in its
evolution. Meanwhile, let no imperfection, no repulsiveness--nay, no
atrocity even--blind us to the ideal value of what we have been
considering, any more than we should allow the disasters that spring
from the use of fire to make us cease to rank it amongst the great
blessings of our earthly life.
LECTURE III.
THE SACRIFICES, SACERDOTAL AND MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS, ESCHATOLOGY AND
COSMOGONY OF MEXICO.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
In our last Lecture we passed in review the chief gods and goddesses of
ancient Mexico, and you might see how, in spite of very characteristic
differences, the Mexican mythology obeys the same law of formation that
manifests itself among the peoples of the Old World, thereby proving
once more that the religious development of humanity is not arbitrary,
that it proceeds in every case under the direction of the inherent and
inalienable principles of the human mind.
To-day we are to complete the internal study of the Mexican religion, by
dealing with its sacrifices, its institutions, and its eschatological
and cosmogonical doctrines. We begin with those sacrifices of which I
have already spoken as so numerous and so horrible.
I.
We have some little difficulty in our times, familiar as we are with
spiritual conceptions of God and the divine purposes, in comprehending
the extreme importance which sacrifices, offerings, gifts to the divine
being, assumed in the eyes of peoples who were still enveloped in the
darkness of polytheism and idolatry. And perhaps we may find it more
difficult yet to realize the primitive object and intention of these
sacrifices. There can be no doubt that they were originally suggested by
the idea that the divine being, whatever it may have been--whether a
natural object, an animal, or a creature analogous to man--liked what we
like, was pleased with what pleases us, and had the same tastes and the
same proclivities as ours. This is the fundamental idea that urged the
polytheistic peoples along the path of religious anthropomorphism.
This principle once established, and the object being to secure the
goodwill and the protection of the divine beings, what could be more
natural than to offer them the things in which men themselves took
pleasure, such as viands, drinks, perfumes, handsome ornaments, slaves
and wives? We must not carry back to the origins of sacrifice the
meta-physical and moral ideas which did not really appear until much
later. And since the necessity of eating, and the pleasure of eating
choice food, take a foremost rank in the estimation of infant peoples,
it is not surprising that the food-offering was the most frequent and
the most important amongst them, so as in some sort to absorb all the
rest.
And here we are compelled to bow before a fact which cannot possibly be
disputed, namely, that traces of the primitive sacrifice of human
victims meet us everywhere. And this shows that cannibalism, which is
now restricted to a few of the savage tribes who have remained closest
to the animal life, was once universal to our race. For no one would
ever have conceived the idea of offering to the gods a kind of food
which excited nothing but disgust and horror amongst men.
This being granted, two rival tendencies must be reckoned with. In the
first place, moral development, with its influence on religious ideas,
worked towards the suppression of the horrible custom of human
sacrifice, whilst at the same time extirpating the taste and desire for
human flesh. For we must not forget that where cannibalism still reigns,
human flesh is regarded as the most delicious of foods; and the Greek
mythology has preserved legends and myths that are connected with the
very epoch at which human sacrifices first became an object of horror to
gods and men. But, in the second place, in virtue of the strange
persistency of rites and usages connected with religion, human
sacrifices prevailed in many places when cannibalism had completely
disappeared from the habits and tastes of the population. Thus the
Semites of Western Asia and the Civaite Hindus, the Celts, and some of
the populations of Greece and Italy, long after they had renounced
cannibalism, still continued to sacrifice human beings to their deities.
And this gives us the clue to a third phase, which was actually
realized in Mexico before the conquest. Cannibalism, in ordinary life,
was no longer practised. The city of Mexico underwent all the horrors of
famine during the siege conducted by Fernando Cortes. When the Spaniards
finally entered the city, they found the streets strewn with corpses,
which is a sufficient proof that human flesh was not eaten even in dire
extremities. And, nevertheless, the Aztecs not only pushed human
sacrifices to a frantic extreme, but they were _ritual cannibals_, that
is to say, there were certain occasions on which they ate the flesh of
the human victims whom they had immolated.
This practice was connected with another religious conception, grafted
upon the former one. Almost everywhere, but especially amongst the
Aztecs, we find the notion that the victim devoted to a deity, and
therefore destined to pass into his substance and to become by
assimilation an integral part of him, is already co-substantial with
him, has already become part of him; so that the worshipper in his turn,
by himself assimilating a part of the victim's flesh, unites himself in
substance with the divine being. And now observe that in all religions
the longing, whether grossly or spiritually apprehended, to enter into
the closest possible union with the adored being is fundamental. This
longing is inseparable from the religious sentiment itself, and becomes
imperious wherever that sentiment is warm; and this consideration is
enough to convince us that it is in harmony with the most exalted
tendencies of our nature, but may likewise, in times of ignorance, give
rise to the most deplorable aberrations.
Note this, again, that immolation or sacrifice cannot be accomplished
without suffering to the victim. Yet more: the immense importance of
sacrifice in the inferior religions raises the mere rite itself to a
position of unrivalled efficacy as gauged by the childlike notions that
have given it birth, so that at last it acquires an intrinsic and
magical virtue in the eyes of the sacrificers. They have lost all
distinct idea as to how their sacrifice gives pleasure to the gods, but
they retain the firm belief that as a matter of fact, it is the
appointed means of acting upon their dispositions and modifying their
will. The civilized Greeks and Romans no longer believed that their gods
ate the flesh of the sacrifices, but this did not prevent their
continuing them as the indispensable means of appeasing the wrath or
conciliating the favour of the deities. To such a length was this
carried in India and Iran, that sacrifice finally came to be regarded as
a cosmic force, a creative act. The gods themselves sacrificed as a
means of creation, or of modifying the existing order of the world. This
idea of the intrinsic and magical virtue of sacrifice naturally re-acted
on the importance attached to the sufferings of the victim so
inseparably connected with it, until the latter came to be regarded as
amongst the prime conditions of an efficacious sacrifice. For the rest,
I need not do more than mention the notions of substitution, of
compensation, and of renunciation on the part of the sacrificer, which
so readily attach themselves to the idea of sacrifice, and represent its
moral aspects.
Now all these considerations will help us to understand both the fearful
intensity and the special significance of the practice of human
sacrifice established among the Aztecs. And here I must ask you to
harden your hearts for a few moments while I conduct you through this
veritable chamber of horrors.
The Mexican sacrifices were, in truth, of the most frightful
description. It was an axiom amongst the Aztecs that none but human
sacrifices were truly efficacious. They were continually making war in
order to get a supply of victims. They regarded the victim, when once
selected, as a kind of incarnation of the deity who was ultimately to
consume his flesh, or at any rate his heart. They retained the practice
of cannibalism as a religious rite, and, as though they had had some of
the Red-skins' blood in their veins, they refined upon the tortures
which they forced those victims, whom they had almost adored the moment
before, to undergo at last.
These victims were regularly selected a considerable time in advance.
They were vigilantly watched, but in other respects were well cared for
and fed with the choicest viands--in a word, fattened. There was not a
single festival upon which at least one of these victims was not
immolated, and in many cases great numbers of them were flung upon the
"stone of sacrifices," where the priests laid their bosoms open, tore
out their hearts, and placed them, as the epitome of the men themselves,
in a vessel full of burning rezin or "copal," before the statue of the
deity. Some few of these sacrifices it is my duty to describe to you.