POPULAR BELIEFS, ETC. 339 



ye not ? Your language, your limbs, are they not good ? 

 Look around beneath the heavens ; see ye not the moun 

 tains and the plains ? 



&quot; Then they looked, and saw all that there was beneath 

 the heavens. And they gave thanks to the Maker and the 

 Moulder, saying, l Truly, twice and three times, thanks ! 

 We have being ; we have been given a mouth, a face ; we 

 speak, we understand, we think, we walk, we feel, and we 

 know that which is far and that which is near. All great 

 things and small on the earth and in the sky do we see. 

 Thanks to thee, O Maker, O Moulder, that we have been 

 created, that we have our being, O our Grandmother, O 

 our Grandfather ! &quot;* 



I can not help regarding these sentiments these rever 

 ies of the uninspired and uninstructed intellect of man feel 

 ing after the mystery of his origin and the origin of created 

 things as equaling in sublimity the contemplations of a 

 Socrates or a Plato groping by the dim light of reason for 

 an outlook into the future of the soul. 



* Histoire des nations civilisees du Mexique et de 1 Amerique centrale, 

 durant les siecles anterieurs a Christophe Colomb, ecrite sur des docu 

 ments originaux et entierement inedits, puises aux anciennes archives des 

 indigenes, par M. 1 abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg. 4 forts vol. in -8 raisin 

 avec carte et figures. 



