Such is the Quiché account of the creation of the earth and its inhabitants and of the first years of the existence of mankind. Although we find here described in the plainest and least equivocal terms a supreme, all-powerful Creator of all things, there are joined with him in a somewhat perplexing manner a number of auxiliary deities and makers. It may be that those whose faith the Popol Vuh represents, conceiving and speaking of their supreme god under many aspects and as fulfilling many functions, came at times, either unconsciously or for dramatic effect, to bring this one great Being upon their mythic stage, sustaining at once many of his different parts and characters. Or perhaps, like the Hebrews, they believed that the Creator had made out of nothing or out of his own essence, in some mysterious way, angels and other beings to obey and to assist him in his sovereign designs, and that these 'were called gods.' That these Quiché notions seem foolishness to us, is no argument as to their adaptation to the life and thoughts of those who believed them; for, in the words of Professor Max Müller, "the thoughts of primitive humanity were not only different from our thoughts, but different also from what we think their thoughts ought to have been."[II-10]
MEXICAN COSMOGONY.
Yet whatever be the inconsistencies that obscure the Popol Vuh, we find them multiplied in the Mexican cosmogony, a tangled string of meagre and apparently fragmentary traditions. There appear to have been two principal schools of opinion in Anáhuac, differing as to who was the Creator of the world, as well as on other points—two veins of tradition, perhaps of common origin, which often seem to run into one, and are oftener still considered as one by historians to whom these heathen vanities were matters of little importance. The more advanced school, ascribing its inspiration to Toltec sources, seems to have flourished notably in Tezcuco, especially while the famous Nezahualcoyotl reigned there, and to have had very definite monotheistic ideas. It taught, as is asserted in unmistakable terms, that all things had been made by one God, omnipotent and invisible; and to this school were probably owing the many gentle and beautiful ideas and rites, mingled with the hard, coarse, and prosaic cult of the mass of the people.[II-11]
The other school may be considered as more distinctively national, and as representing more particularly the ordinary Mexican mind. To it is to be ascribed by far the larger part of all we know about the Mexican religion.[II-12] According to the version of this school, Tezcatlipoca, a god whose birth and adventures are set forth hereafter, was the creator of the material heaven and earth, though not of mankind; and sometimes even the honor of this partial creation is disputed by others of the gods.
One Mexican nation, again, according to an ancient writer of their own blood, affirmed that the earth had been created by chance; and as for the heavens, they had always existed.[II-13]
CHIMALPOPOCA MANUSCRIPT.
From the fragments of the Chimalpopoca manuscript given by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg we learn that the Creator—whoever he may have been—produced his work in successive epochs. In the sign Tochtli, the earth was created; in the sign Acatl was made the firmament, and in the sign Tecpatl the animals. Man it is added, was made and animated out of ashes or dust by God on the seventh day, Ehecatl, but finished and perfected by that mysterious personage Quetzalcoatl. However this account may be reconciled with itself or with others, it further appears that man was four times made and four times destroyed.[II-14]
This may perhaps be looked upon as proceeding from what I have called for convenience the Toltecan school, though this particular fragment shows traces of Christian influence. What follows seems however to belong to a distinctively Mexican and ruder vein of thought. It is gathered from Mendieta, who was indebted again to Fray Andres de Olmos, one of the earliest missionaries among the Mexicans of whom he treats; and it is decidedly one of the most authentic accounts of such matters extant.