The foregoing investigation seems to have shown that in all [pg 535] countries alike, at one period or other, the cross-symbol or swastika expressed absolutely the same meaning. Primarily the record of a year, which suggested the division of the heaven into four parts, it had come to signify the establishment of communal life on a basis of fixed law, order and harmony. Like the number four itself which, in Pythagorean philosophy, is identified with wisdom and justice “because it is the first square number, the product of equals,” the cruciform symbols have been the emblems of justice, equality and brotherhood.
From the dawn of human history, the cross, therefore, appears to have expressed a plan as simple as it was noble and great, which consisted in peaceably uniting men, on principles of good-will, peace, equity, equality and mutual help, of instituting and organizing communal life, and of regulating its activity in accord with the immutable laws which govern the movements of celestial bodies, causing the circumpolar constellations to assume opposite positions, forming the sign of the cross, and marking seasons, days and years, all testifying to the existence of a single, all-ruling, all-pervading, stable [pg 536] and eternal central power, who thus controlled not only the heavens but, by a human representative, the earthly kingdom, laid out on the celestial plan.
Considering that no less an authority than St. Augustine has asserted “that which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and in fact was with the human race from the beginning,” it is permissible to ask whether the above scheme does not strikingly substantiate his dictum, afford a deep view under the surface of accumulated dogma and a perception of the mighty principle that has been at work from the beginning of all things and was understood by many at that time when “the people that sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light sprang up.”... “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ ” (Matthew iv, 16, 17). Adopting the cross as the emblem [pg 537] of his earthly mission he said: “If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me.” By the words: “I bear in my body the mark of the Lord Jesus,” St. Paul designates the recognized “mark” to have been the quadruplicate cross of the Saviour, who charged his apostles to preach, saying: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and promised them that “ye which have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew xix, 28). The mother of Zebedee's children came unto him asking that her sons might sit “the one on thy right hand and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom” (Matthew xx, 20). Repeatedly, the Teacher, referring to children, said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,” or “Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” St. Paul and his followers were designated as “those that have turned the world upside down ... doing contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus” (Acts xvii, 6 and 7).
It is well known that the early Christian church was persecuted because, from the first, it preached a total regeneration of human society and its reëstablishment of a basis of peace and good-will, social equality, absolute justice, mutual aid, respect and sympathy, unselfish, disinterested subservience of the individual to the interest of the community.
It was for the sublime principle of a religious democracy and the regeneration of human society that, in an age of tyranny, oppression and bloodshed, the early Christian martyrs laid down their lives. The foundations of religious orders were as many attempts to realize the Christian ideal, and to this day the Roman Catholic Church, whose clergy and religious orders unquestionably afford a splendid living example of devotion to a common cause, self-abnegation, obedience and humility, clings to the ideal of a state in which temporal power is wielded by a hierarchy raised to rulership from all ranks, merely by virtue of personal, moral and intellectual qualities. Throughout the Christian church the ideal of religious democracy prevails. Each day it is prayed for in the words “Thy kingdom come,” by those taught to look forward to the promise of the time when “former things are passed away and a holy Jerusalem shall descend out of heaven from God, lying four-square, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels and names written [pg 538] thereon which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel ... and the wall of the city had twelve foundations and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb,.... And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple in it ... but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.... And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it and on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits and yielded her fruit every month ...” (Revelation, chaps. xxi and xxii).
It appears significant, in the light of the present investigation, that the birth of Christianity, as well as the revival of pagan systems of philosophy, embodying principles for the organization of religious brotherhoods and ideal democracies, should coincide with the spread of the great tidings that a star had been seen by the Magi, or “wise men of the East, who came from the east to Jerusalem.” Occurring, as it did, after “the interregnum as regards pole-stars,” during which nomadic tribes and seafarers had vainly sought the fixed star which had guided their forefathers, the appearance of a brilliant pole-star must have seemed doubly significant and revived, among pagan philosophers, the ideal of an earthly kingdom ruled by Heaven. The advent, at this time, of the Messiah who, with his twelve disciples, announced that the kingdom of heaven was nigh and taught that God was to be worshipped in the Spirit only, must indeed have appeared particularly impressive and well-timed.
Faithfully clinging to the ideal of a regenerated religious democracy, the early Christian church maintained itself through centuries of persecution and is slowly advancing, amidst almost overwhelming and innumerable difficulties, towards its realization.
Returning to Mexico we find that its civilization at the time of the Conquest was precisely what might be expected if a small body of men of superior wisdom and experience, such as was possessed by a remnant of Græco-Egyptian philosophers, had embarked in ships manned by the descendants of Phœnician seafarers, and found refuge in the “land of the West,” amongst simple, docile people, existing in large numbers, who, treated “as little children and instructed with love and gentleness, willingly submitted themselves to the guidance of their teachers.” A single, short-lived generation [pg 539] of these would have amply sufficed for the establishment of the governmental system and calendar, the firm institution of a “celestial kingdom,” and the spread of knowledge of the technique of various arts and industries deemed most useful to the natives. On the other hand, the foreign element, whose aims were chiefly ideal, could have left little or no impression upon the evolution of the native race, its art and industry, which doubtlessly followed its original independent line of development.
It is remarkable how the echo of great events in Old World history seem to have reached the Western hemisphere. In the Old World the eleventh and twelfth centuries were marked by a revival of religious enthusiasm, by the Crusades, the persecution of infidels by the Christian world and by a general stirring amongst oriental people, the descendants of the ancient pole-star worshippers.
Historical records and traditions accord in stating that in about the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era, the civilizations of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America underwent a great period of warfare, pestilence and famine, leading to the disintegration of the great ancient centres, to numberless migrations, and to an assumption of dominion in Mexico by a fierce warrior-race who increased the number of human sacrifices. It seems significant that it is to this troublous period in the history of ancient America that the advent of the Incas in Peru is assigned by native tradition, which also records the existence of more ancient centres of civilization situated around the Titicaca lake. The foundation of the Inca empire is assigned to as late as about 1200 A.D. (see p. [148], note 1), and all who compare Plato's scheme for the reëstablishment of the holy polity of the Magnetes, and the description of the Peruvian “Four in One” state, must admit that the latter constitutes the most perfect example known, of a community based on those numerical principles which were considered most perfect by Plato. At a first glance one might be tempted to conclude that the foreign civilizers of Peru, the Incas, were acquainted with Plato's twelve-fold scheme and deliberately established or reëstablished a “divine polity” accordingly, naming it the “Four in One” and instituting the worship of a supreme divinity designated as “Earth, Air, Fire and Water in One,” in consonance with the cosmical theory said to have been first formulated by Empedocles about B.C. 444, and adopted by Plato. Reflection shows, however, that no such conclusion is justifiable until competent authorities have thoroughly [pg 540] investigated and satisfactorily established how far the ideas of Empedocles and Plato were original and how far they incorporated older philosophical ideas, such as were preserved by the Egyptian priesthood or had been disseminated by the Phœnicians.[158] Nevertheless it is an undeniable fact that the Inca colony constitutes a most valuable object-lesson of a “cosmical state” founded on precisely the numerical scheme and principles of organization advocated by Plato. Reflection shows, moreover, that such a polity could only have been established and maintained itself during centuries, in a land free from enemies and amongst docile people “apt for subjection.”