520 ARCHEOLOGY 



explain how man was born into the world and how he extended 

 himself all over it. 



Science also can say: "Fiat Lux.'' 



But if man's material life, to call it so, is plainly reflected in the 

 study of the migrations, his intellectual life is chiefly made known 

 to us by the evolution of his religious ideas: and on this point as 

 well, the aid of archeology is of equal importance. Much light 

 has been thrown on the subject by the explorations of latter years 

 on the old Continent. The studies of our antiquities have settled 

 be}^ond a doubt the Indian theogony. The Maya chroniclers of the 

 seventeenth century had given us but scant information, indefinite 

 and unclassified at its best. By the labors of Schelhas, Brinton, and 

 Gunckel, great strides have been advanced in a relatively short 

 space of time. Taking these as our point of departure, penetrating 

 into the spirit of the hieroglyphics and inscriptions, and comparing 

 them with the corresponding Nahua ideas, which are half hidden 

 in bizarre tales and strange codex paintings, we have been able to 

 lift a corner of the veil of that astronomical theogony, as mysterious 

 as the night on which the awestruck eyes of men created it. In 

 the black vault of heaven the bright stars, like luminous pupils 

 of invisible gods: on earth, above the teocalli, the piercing eyes 

 of the astronomer priests, like dazzling stars such as might have 

 fallen from the skies. From this clash of lights, men's eyes and 

 stars, there was kindled that first spark of uranic religion. 



Man, in proportion to the development of his brain, continuously 

 raised his gaze: at first it was directed earthward to the animals 

 that walk on the ground; next to the trees that lifted their graceful 

 tops to the wind; then up to high peaks crowned with eternal snow; 

 till finally it rested on the sky. 



There was then formed a majestic one might almost say heavenly 

 astronomical religion. The father creator was the sky, Xiuh- 

 tecuhtli, the azure lord; the mother was Omecihuatl, the double 

 woman, the Milky Way. The former worked on the latter by means 

 of fire; and from their cosmic matter the stars were loosened; the 

 chief of which were the sun, Tonatiuh, the moon, Tezcatlipoca, and 

 Venus, Quetzalcoatl. These they made their greatest gods. In order 

 to worship them, they " represented them as anthropomorphic:" 

 they represented them in human shape. Mj r riads of statues of deities 

 were then made, now of clay, now of wood, now of stone; and so 

 idolatry necessarily came into existence. The Indians were able 

 to arrive at an astronomical worship; but their psychological lim- 

 itations hindered them from penetrating beyond the veil of materi- 

 alism. They had worshiped animals because they could see and 

 hold them; the trees they could touch; the mountains where their 

 feet ascended; the stars their eyes beheld. Yet did they not advance 



