MEXICAN CULTURE. 65 



througliout his wide dominions, where he nominated the provincial governors, 

 imposed tribute and levied troops. They fancied that here also all authority 

 emanated from the imperial power which was regularly maintained in the same 

 dynasty by a sort of right divine. They were unable to understand that the 

 Aztecs, after having lived in family communities without any private ownership 

 of the soil, had established a military democracy formed of kindred groups who 

 selected their own "speakers," that is, chiefs. 



Surprised, on the other hand, to find in the New World a great city, larger and 

 wealthier than their own capitals, the conquerors naturally exaggerated the 

 resources of Mexico and the culture of its inhabitants. Nevertheless certain docu- 

 ments relating to the native language, the sciences and the art of transmitting 

 thought, the care also bestowed on agriculture and irrigation, lastly, the objects 

 preserved in our museums, and the monuments still standing in the neighbourhood 

 of the cities or buried under dense forest growths, make it evident that j\lexican 

 civilisation had raised itself far above the level of barbaric populations. 



The Aztec language, which was probably identified with that of the Toltecs 

 and Chichimecs, and certain dialects of which were and still are spoken far to the 

 south in Guatemala, Salvador, and Nicaragua, was by far the most prevalent idiom 

 in Mexican territory. It was current throughout the greater part of the Anahuac 

 plateau, on the' Gulf of Mexico as far as the Coatzacoalcos delta, and on the 

 Pacific coastlands from the Gulf of California to that of Tehuantepec. It is still 

 in use, side by side with Spanish, in all these regions, although the modern dia- 

 lects scarcely retain a third of the stock of words in the literary standard. As 

 the exclusive medium of civilised intercourse Aztec had become the language of 

 diplomacy and trade ; as each province was conquered, the speech of the ruling 

 people assumed an official character, and the inhabitants were compelled to learn it. 



Aztec belongs to the polysynthetic order of speech, and of this class it is a 

 typical specimen ; the words of the sentence are fused together by modification to 

 an extraordinary extent, and in accordance with many subtle laws of euphony. 

 The language is wonderfully plastic, and those writers who have studied it 

 thoroughly vie with each other in vaunting its varied qualities of grace, subtlety 

 and wealth of descriptive terms ; in his work on natural history Hernandez 

 enumerates two hundred species of native birds and twelve hundred of plants, all 

 of which have distinct names in Aztec. It also abounds in abstract terms to such 

 an extent that translators have had no difficulty in finding Mexican expressions 

 for such metaphysical or religious words as occur in the New Testament, the 

 Imitation of Christ, and other works of a like character. Its finest literary monu- 

 ments are of an ethical order, moral exhortations breathing a lofty sentiment 

 unsurpassed even in Hindu classical literature. 



A remarkable indication of the high degree of civilisation attained by the 

 Mexicans is afforded by their knowledge of astronomic phenomena. They were 

 able to describe the movements of the sun, moon, and some planets, and the exact 

 duration of the solar year ; the return of each " new plant," as they expressed it, 

 was more accurately known to them than it is even now in official Russia, where 

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