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 Quichés), 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 Quichés and Tlaloc at Mexico, where he took his place amongst the most revered deities. His name signifies "noise," "rumbling." Amongst the Quichés 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.