CANNIBALISM AS A CUSTOM. 207 



pie expression of hatred or contempt, or tlie supply of -necessary food. 

 The custom was closely associated with their religious observance ; 

 the eating of the flesh by the people, after the blood and quivering 

 hearts of the victims had been offered to the deity, partook of the 

 character of a sacrament as well as of a banquet. Prescott, in his 

 " Conquest of Mexico," tells us, in his picturesque language, of the 

 awful sacrifices to the war-god Huitzilopotchli, to whom hecatombs of 

 human beings were usually saci-ificed ; and of the more epicurean and 

 delicate Tezcatlepoca, who required but one victim, but insisted that 

 that one must be " distinguished for his personal beauty, and without 

 a blemish on his body." 



" The most loathsome part of the story," Prescott goes on to say, 

 "the manner in which the body of the sacrificed captive was disposed 

 of, remains yet to be told. It was delivered to the warrior who had 

 taken him in battle, and by him, after being dressed, was served up in 

 an entertainment to his friends. This was not the coarse repast of fam- 

 ished cannibals, but a banquet teeming with delicious beverages and 

 delicate viands, prepared with art, and attended by both sexes, who, 

 as we shall see hereafter, conducted themselves with all the decorum 

 of civilized life." 



This shows that the custom of cannibalism in Mexico must be laid 

 to the charge of religious feeling. The step is an easy and natural 

 one that would lead a people who followed a strictly anthropomorphic 

 worship to the consumption of the sacrifice which they were led to 

 believe was acceptable to the gods. Prescott notes the same thing : 

 " One detestable feature of the Aztec superstition, however, sunk it 

 far below the Christian. This was its cannibalism, though in truth 

 the Mexicans were not cannibals in the coarsest acceptance of the term. 

 They did not feed on human flesh merely to satisfy a brutish appetite, 

 but in obedience to their religion. Their repasts were made of the 

 victims whose blood had been poured out at the altar of sacrifice. 

 This is a distinction worthy of notice." 



But with Aztecs, as with other peoples, the appalling appetite only 

 grew by what it fed on, and a morbid and overmastering craving for 

 this awful diet prompted them to frequent cannibal feasts, in which 

 desire alone, and no religious ceremony, was the cause. Men having 

 once tasted human flesh, like the man-eating tiger, always hanker after 

 it with a strange and morbid pertinacity that seems almost unconquera- 

 ble, as is shown in the case of Feejee, where the traditional and imme- 

 morial custom was habitually practiced (and is continued to this day 

 in remoter parts) long after the introduction of pigs. 



In the Feejee and other Polynesian islands, where there are no 

 indigenous animals, cannibalism may be allowed, perhaps, some excuse. 

 Man is by nature carnivorous as well as graminivorous, and the natu- 

 ral promptings of his physical wants would suggest the food that we, 

 with our plethora of beef and mutton, too unadvisedly stigmatize as 



