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-fe_ 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.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
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 _Montana_, 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 Abbe," 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 depots in which
were stored provisions, arms and clothes for the army. All this was
regulated, accounted for and checked by means of official Quipos.