[201] Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 267. Cf. ibid. p. 53.
[202] Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, pp. 112. 177.
CHAPTER LI
GODS AS GUARDIANS OF MORALITY (continued)
FROM the gods of savage races we shall now pass to consider the attitudes of more civilised gods towards matters of worldly morality.
The deities of ancient Mexico were generally clothed with terror, and delighted in vengeance and human sacrifices. But there was also the god Quetzalcoatl, generous of gifts, mild and gentle, and so averse from such sacrifices that he shut his ears with both hands when they were mentioned.[1] The god Tezcatlipoca, again, was looked upon as the austere guardian of law and morals; but, as Sir E. B. Tylor observes, the remarkable Aztec formulas collected by Sahagun, in which this deity is so prominent a figure, show traces of Christian admixture in their material, as well as of Christian influence in their style.[2] It seems that the Mexicans had reached no fixed or systematic conclusions as to the relation of the moral to the religious life.[3] They held that departed souls attained different degrees of felicity or of wretchedness according to their different modes of death. Warriors who died on the battle-field or in the hands of the enemy’s priests, and merchants who died on their journey, went to the house of the sun; those who were killed by lightning, who were drowned, or who died from some incurable disease went to a terrestrial paradise; and those who died of old age or any ordinary disease went to a land of darkness and desolation, where they after a time sunk in a sleep which knew no waking.[4]
[1] Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 294 sq. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 259.
[2] Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 344.
[3] Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 104 sq.
[4] Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 532 sqq. Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 242 sq.