have been absent in countries dominated by a solar worship. We have
already seen them in Central America and in Mexico, and we also find
them in Egypt, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Palestine, at Carthage and
elsewhere. In these columns the idea of fertilization is associated with
that of the pleasure the Sun must feel in tracing out their shadows as
he caresses their faces and summits with his rays. The earliest
quadrants were traced at the foot of these columns. In Peru, they were
levelled at the top, and were regarded as "seats of the Sun," who loved
to rest upon them. At the equinoxes and solstices they placed golden
thrones upon them for him to sit upon. Those nearest to the equator were
held in greatest veneration, because the shadows were shorter there than
elsewhere, and the Sun appeared to rest vertically upon them.[106]
Prayer, in the proper sense of the word, asserted its place but feebly
in the Peruvian religion. But hymns to the Sun were chanted at the great
festivals and by the people as they went to cultivate the lands of the
Sun. Every strophe ended with the cry, _Hailly_, or "triumph." It was
the Peruvian _Io Paean_. These chants, as far as they are still known to
us, have something soft and sad about them. The rule of the Incas,
paternal indeed, but monotonous in the extreme, must have tended to
produce melancholy. In 1555, a Spanish composer wrote a mass upon the
themes of these indigenous airs. It was sung in chorus, and it is
chiefly to it that we owe the preservation of these chants.[107]
But the grand form of religious demonstration among the Peruvians was
the dance. They were very assiduous in this form of devotion, and indeed
we know what a large place the earliest of the arts occupied in the
primitive religions generally. The dance was the first and chief means
adopted by pre-historic humanity of entering into active union with the
deity adored. The first idea was to imitate the measured movements of
the god, or at any rate what were supposed to be such. Afterwards, this
fundamental motive was more or less forgotten; but the rite remained in
force, like so many other religious forms which tradition and habit
sustained even when the spirit was gone. In Peru, this tradition was
still full of life. The name of the principal Peruvian festivals,
_Raymi_, signifies "dance." The performances were so animated, that the
dancers seemed to the Europeans to be out of their senses. It is
noteworthy that the Incas themselves took no part in these violent
dances, but had an "Incas' dance" of their own, which was grave and
measured.[108]
There were four great official festivals in the year, coinciding with
the equinoxes and the solstices. The first was the festival of the
Winter solstice, which fell in June. It was the _Raymi_, or festival
_par excellence_, the _Citoc Raymi_, the feast of the diminished and
(henceforth) growing Sun. It lasted nine days, the first three of which
were given up to fasting. On the morning of the great day, a grand
procession, led by the reigning Inca and his family, followed by the
nobles and the people, proceeded, with insignia, banners and symbolic
masks, towards the place of the dawn and the rising Sun. When the
luminary appeared, the crowd fell to the earth and threw him kisses. The
Inca presented the sacred beverage to the Sun, drank some of it himself,
and passed it on to his suite. This was a sort of solar communion. Then
they went to the temple of the Sun to sacrifice a black llama there.
After this, they kindled the new fire by means of the concave mirror,
and slaughtered a number of llamas, representing the Sun's present to
the people. The pieces were distributed to the families, where they were
eaten with the sacred cakes prepared by the Virgins of the Sun. This was
the second act of communion with the luminary to whom the day was
sacred. The remaining days of the festival were passed in rejoicings,
when the people seem to have made themselves ample amends for the fast
with which they had begun.[109]
The second great festival, that of Spring, which fell in September, was
the _Citua Raymi_, the feast of Purification. But do not attach any
essentially moral significance to the idea of purification. The object
in view was to purify the territory from all influences hostile to the
health, security and prosperity of the inhabitants. Ball-shaped cakes
were eaten on this occasion, in which was mixed the blood of victims or
of young children, who were not slaughtered however, but bled above the
nose, which is evidence of a previous custom of far greater ferocity,
and of the gradual softening of the Peruvian ritual. With this bread the
people rubbed their bodies all over, and the doors of their houses
likewise. Then, a little before sunset, a very strange ceremony was
performed. An Inca, clad in precious armour and lance in hand, descended
from the fortress of Cuzco, followed by four relatives whom the Sun had
specially charged with the task of chasing away by open force all the
maladies from the city and its environs. They traversed the chief
streets of Cuzco at full speed, amid the acclamations of the
inhabitants, and then surrendered their lances to others, who were
relieved in their turn, till the limits of the ancient state of Cuzco
were reached. There the lances were fixed in the ground, as so many
talismans against evil influences. At night there was a great
torch-light procession, at the close of which the torches were hurled
into the river, and thus the evil spirits of the night were expelled, as
those of the day had been by the lancers of the Sun.[110] Observe that
in Africa, amongst the Blacks, a kind of "chase of the evil spirits" is
practised (though accompanied with far fewer ceremonies than in Peru),
in which the inhabitants of a village, armed with sticks and uttering
formulae of exorcism, expel the evil spirits from their houses and from
their streets, and pursue them into the desert or the interior of a
forest. But notice here, again, with what art the Incas had contrived to
turn an old superstition to account in the interests of their own
prestige. If maladies did not decimate the people of Cuzco, it was to
their Incas that they owed their safety.
The third great festival, the Aymorai, which fell in May, celebrated the
Harvest. A statue was constructed out of grains of corn glued together,
and was adored under the name of _Pirrhua_, which in this case may well
be a contraction of Viracocha, the god of fertilizing moisture. On this
occasion a number of sacrifices were made at home by the
householders.[111]
The fourth great feast fell in December. It was the _Capac Raymi_, the
festival of Power, in which the god of thunder was the object of a
special worship by the side of the Sun. On this occasion the young
Incas, after fasts, tournaments and other tests, received the
investiture of manhood by having their ears pierced, and receiving a
scarf, an axe and a crown of flowers. The young Curacas of the same age
were also admitted to the privileges and duties of their rank, and
shared with the Inca the sacred bread in token of indissoluble communion
with him.[112]
There were also a number of other and less important feasts. Each month
had one of its own. Then there were occasional feasts, to celebrate the
triumphal return of a victorious Inca for example, or when the
tournaments of the young nobles, to which a religious value was
attached, took place, or when silent processions lasting a day and
night, and followed by dances, were instituted to avert threatening
calamities, and so forth.[113] In Peru, as in so many other regions,
eclipses were the subject of great terror. The eclipses of the Sun were
attributed to his own anger, those of the Moon to an illness caused by
the attack of an evil spirit, to frighten which away and put it to
flight a hideous yelling was raised.[114]
There were sorcerers in Peru as everywhere else; but in Peru too, as
everywhere else where a priesthood has acquired a regular organization
and made its authority respected, sorcery was hardly resorted to save by
the lower classes.[115] In fact, the sorcerer is the priest of backward
tribes, and the priest is the developed sorcerer. By his superior
knowledge, by the more stable guarantees which he can give as the member
of an imposing organization, by the nature of the religion of which he
is the organ, and which raises him above the incoherent puerilities of
animism, the priest eclipses the sorcerer and relegates him to the lower
strata of society, which is just where his own titles to superiority are
least appreciated. The sorcerer sinks in proportion as the priest
rises.[116] For the rest, the official priesthood had its own diviners,
who could foretel the future, the _Huacarimachi_, or "they who make the
gods speak." The oracles of the valley of Rimac or Lima were much
frequented; and, moreover, the Peruvians, like so many peoples of the
Old World, thought that they could read the future in the entrails of
the victims offered in sacrifice.[117] This wide-spread belief rests on
the idea that immolation unites the victim so closely to the deity that
it enters into communion with his thoughts and intentions, so that its
heart, liver, and all other organs supposed to be affected by mental and
moral dispositions, receive the impress of the divine prevision. Is it
not passing strange, Gentlemen, that this mode of divination, which
appears so absurd to us, which has no rational basis whatever, which
rests on a singularly subtle conception of the relations between the
creature sacrificed and the being to whom it is offered, has secured the
prolonged confidence of the peoples of the Old World, and appears again
in Peru, where it cannot have been imitated from any one?
II.
It has been asked whether the native religion of Peru rested any system
of elevated morals on its fundamental principles. Gentlemen, I am
persuaded that religion and morals unite together and interpenetrate
each other in the higher regions of thought and life. Perhaps the most
distinct result of our Christian education is the full comprehension of
the fact that what is moral is religious, and that immorality cannot on
any pretext be allowed as legitimately religious. But we must certainly
yield to the overwhelming evidence that in the lower stages of religion
this union of the two sisters is present only in germ. Religion, still
quite selfish in its character, pursues its own way and seeks its own
satisfactions independently of all moral considerations, and almost
always lives in a state of separation from morality. We ought therefore
to expect that in systems such as that of Peru--which have already risen
much above the low level of the primitive religions, but are still far
below that of the higher ones--we should find a certain religious ethic,
a certain moral tendency in religion, but likewise all kinds of
inconsistencies, and constant relapses towards the ancient separation of
the two sisters. As a general rule, we may say that even where the
Peruvian religion seems to undertake the elevation and protection of
morals, it does so rather with a utilitarian and selfish view, than with
any real purpose of sanctifying the heart and will.
Thus we have noted ceremonies which forcibly recal the Communion. But
the great object in view was to secure to the communicants the safety
and well-being that would result from their union with the Sun or his
representatives. The moral idea occupies but a small place in this
communion, though it is but right to add that the great social laws
were placed under the patronage and sanction of the Sun, whose
legislation the Incas were held responsible for enforcing. In the same
way we find in Peru something that closely resembles baptism. From
fifteen to twenty days after birth the child received its first name,
after being plunged into water. But this purification had nothing to do
with the ideas of sin and regeneration. It was but a form of exorcism,
destined to secure the child from the evil spirits and their malign
influences. Between the ages of ten and twelve, the child's definitive
name was conferred. On this occasion his hair and nails were cut off,
and offered to the Sun and the guardian spirits.[118] This represented
the consecration of his person, but its main object was to secure him
the protection of the divine power.
There was likewise a sacerdotal confession, but it was an institution of
state and of police rather than a sacrament with a moral purpose. The
great object was to discover all actions, whether voluntary or not,
which might bring misfortune upon the state if not expiated by the
appropriate penances and rites. The father confessors of Peru were
inquisitors charged with the searching out of secret faults and the
exaction of their avowal. A refusal to confess might provoke severe
measures. A proof of the small influence of the moral element in the
whole system of inquisition may be found in the fact that the priest
relied on purely fortuitous tests in deciding whether or not to give
absolution. For instance, he would take a pinch of maize grains, and if
the number turned out to be even, he would declare the confession good,
and give absolution, otherwise he would say the penitent must have
concealed something, and would make him confess again.[119]
Our conviction that the Peruvian religion had but a very elementary
moral significance, receives a final confirmation from the beliefs
concerning the future life.
It is clear that no very definite ideas on this point had become
generally established. In fact, we find amongst the Peruvians at the
time of the conquest the underlying conceptions of the most widely
severed peoples, all mingled together. Thus the common people of Peru,
like all savages, thought of the future life as a continuation, pure and
simple, of the present life. This explains the custom of burying all
kinds of useful and desirable objects with the dead--giving him an
emigrant's outfit, in short. The worship of ancestors is easily grafted
upon this conception of the life beyond the grave. These ancestors may
still succour, protect and inspire their descendants. I am assured at
first hand that to this very day, and in spite of the efforts of the
Catholic clergy, the worship of ancestors is still widely practised by
the native population. There was not the least idea of a resurrection of
the body. If the corpse was preserved, especially in the case of
departed Incas, it was because the Peruvians believed that the soul
which had left it still retained a marked predilection for its ancient
abode and liked to return to it from time to time; and also because they
attributed magic virtues to the remains thus preserved. No idea of
recompense is as yet associated with this purely animistic and primitive
conception of the life beyond the tomb.[120]
Amongst the higher classes, the ideas entertained on this same subject
had become a little less naive. The Incas were supposed to be
transported to the mansion of the Sun, their father, where they still
lived together as his family. The Curacas or nobles would either follow
them there, or would still live under the earth beneath the sceptre of
the god of the dead, Supay, the Hades or Pluto of the Peruvian
mythology. Do not identify this deity with a Satan or Ahriman of any
kind. He was not a wicked, but rather a sinister god, the conception of
whom could wake no joyous or even serene emotions. He was a voracious
deity, of insatiable appetite. At Quito, at any rate before the conquest
of the country by the Incas, a hundred children were sacrificed to him
every year. There is no idea of positive suffering inflicted on the
wicked under his direction. But the subterranean abode is gloomy and
dismal, like the place of shades in the Odyssey. Exceptional
considerations of birth, rank or valour in war, determine the passage of
chosen souls to heaven, where their lot will of course be far more
brilliant and happy than that of the souls that remain in the
subterranean regions. Thus the aristocratic point of view, barely
modified by the high importance attributed to the warlike virtues, still
dominates the ideas of a future life in ancient Peru, as in Mexico, in
Polynesia and in Africa. This is a final proof that the moral element
was but feebly present in the ancient Peruvian religion. For wherever a
clear and definite belief in a conscious life beyond the grave is united
to a sense of the religious character of morality, it is likewise held,
by an obvious connection of ideas, that the lot of departed souls will
depend completely upon their moral condition, without distinction of
birth or rank.[121]
This Peruvian religion, then, in spite of its elevation and refinement
in some respects, forcibly reminds us of the walls of its own temples,
all plated with gold, but covered in with straw, and poor and unvaried
in architecture. A monotonous, unformed, gloomy spirit seems to pervade
the whole institution, in spite of its brilliant exterior. The air of
the convent broods over it. Those thousands of functionaries who spent
their lives in superintending the furniture, the dress, the work, the
very cookery, of the families under their charge, and inflicting
corporal chastisement on those whom they surprised in a fault, might
succeed in forming a correct and regular society, drilled like the bees
in a hive, might form a nation of submissive slaves, but could never
make a nation of _men_; and this is the deep cause that explains the
irremediable collapse of this Peruvian society under the vigorous blows
of a handful of unscrupulous Spaniards. It was a skilfully constructed
machine, which worked like a chronometer; but when once the mainspring
was broken, all was over.
It is no part of our task to tell the story of the conversion of the
natives to Roman Catholic Christianity. It was comparatively easily
effected. The fall of the Incas was a mortal blow to the religious, no
less than to the political, edifice in which they were the key-stone of
the arch. It was evident that the Sun had been unable or unwilling to
protect his children. The conqueror imposed his religion on Peru, as on
Mexico, by open force; and the Spanish Inquisition, though not giving
rise to such numerous and terrible spectacles in the former as in the
latter country, yet carried out its work of terror and oppression there
too. The result was that peculiar character of the Catholicism of the
natives of Peru which strikes every traveller, and consists in a kind of
timid and superstitious submission, without confidence and without zeal,
associated with the obstinate preservation of customs which mount back
to the former religious regime, and with memories of the golden age of
the Inca rule under which their ancestors were privileged to live, but
which has gone to return no more.
III.
And now it only remains for us to draw the inferences and conclusions
suggested by our examination of the ancient religions of Mexico and
Peru, so closely associated with the remarkable though imperfect
civilizations to which the two nations had attained.
We have not stayed to discuss the hypotheses that have so often been put
forward, to attach these religions and civilizations to some immigration
from the Old World. The fact is that all these attempts rest on the
arbitrary selection of some few traits of resemblance, on which
exclusive stress is laid, to the neglect of still more characteristic
differences. The best proof that the work of affiliation has been
abortive, in spite of the high authority of some of the names that have
been lent to it, may be found in the fact that every possible nation of
the Old World has in its turn been selected as the true parent of the
Peruvians and Mexicans. The Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the
Hindus, the Buddhists of India and China, the Romans, even the Celts and
the Chaldeans, have been put forward one after the other. Nay, the
English themselves have been tried! There is a gratifying legend which
brings the story of Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo into connection with the
results of the shipwreck of an _Englishman_, whose national name was
transformed into _Inga Man_, which again, in conjunction with _Cocapac_,
the name of the father of the native wife whom the Englishman had taken
to himself, made _Inca Manco Capac_! The sequel is obvious. The two
fair-skinned children that sprang from this union were of course the
founders of the Inca family and the state of Cuzco.[122] I need not tell
you that all this will not bear a moment's examination. Everything shows
that the civilizations and religions of Mexico and Peru are
autochthonous, springing from the soil itself.
There is surely something very strange in this passion for localizing
all origins at some single point of the globe. Why not admit that what
took place there may have taken place elsewhere also, that the same
concourse of events which called forth such and such a result in a
certain given place may have been reproduced somewhere else, and
consequently given rise to identical or closely analogous results there
too? Does not our own experience teach us that the contact of a
civilized with an uncivilized people is not enough in itself to ensure
the adoption by the latter of the civilization that is brought to it? It
is the exception, not the rule, for the Red-skin, the Kafir, the
Australian or the Papuan, to become civilized. Civilization can only be
handed on if the invaded race possesses a special disposition and
aptitude for civilized life; and this aptitude may have existed to such
a degree as to be capable of independent development in the New-World as
we know it did in the Old; and if there were centres of such nascent
civilization in Central America, in Mexico and in Peru, it is absolutely
superfluous to search elsewhere than in America itself for the origins
of American civilization.
But the mistake into which so many historians and travellers have fallen
is explained, to a certain extent, by the fact that, in examining the
beliefs, the monuments and the customs of Peru and Mexico, we come upon
phenomena at every moment which are identical with or analogous to
something we have observed in the Old World. The temples, with their
successive terraces, remind us of ancient Chaldea, and the hieroglyphics
of ancient Egypt. The convents recal the Indian and Chinese Buddhism.
The cruel and bloody sacrifices and the preponderance of the Sun-worship
have a Semitic tinge. There are myths and curious resemblances of words
which wake thoughts of Hellenic civilization; and sacerdotal castes and
sacrificial rites which bring us round to the Celts! Nay, are there not
even beliefs as to the arrival or return of a deity who will restore
order and avenge outraged justice, round which there breathes a kind of
Messianic air? So much so, indeed, that I must add to the list of
supposed ancestors of American civilization the ten lost tribes of
Israel, who must have fled from the yoke of their Ninevite oppressors
right across Asia into America! The partizans of this ingenious
hypothesis have, it is true, forgotten to inquire how far these
Israelites of the North, whose enthusiasm for the house of Judah was, to
say the least of it, decidedly subdued, had ever heard of the Messianic
hopes at all!
The real result of all these wild speculations, however, is to bring out
the fact very clearly, that in the native religions of Mexico, of
Central America and of Peru, we find a number of traits united which are
scattered amongst the most celebrated religions of our own ancient
world; so that this new and well-defined region gives us a precious
opportunity of testing the value of the explanations of religious ideas
and practices deduced from the comparative study of religions.