MEXICAN CULTUEE. 



71 



devotees sought for still nobler subjects to propitiate them. In the Christian 

 religion, a Son of God, God Himself, expiated the sins of the elect on the cross ; 

 but those who crucified Him were at least unconscious of His divinity. The 

 Mexicans, on the contrary, created gods to immolate them to still more powerful 

 deities. During the great national ceremonies, a scion of the royal house would 

 not have satisfied them ; they required a son of God, and the young men whom 

 they offered up were raised by them to the divine rank. Before slaying these 

 gods incarnate, the priests followed in the triumphal procession, falling down in 

 worship before them. Then, after tLe sacrifice, those who tasted of the sacred 

 flesh, and who " ate god," as indicated by the very name of the feast, assimilated 

 the divine substance, and thought they thus became participators in the nature of 

 the gods. Such was the hideous form that " god-eating" had assumed in Mexico. 

 Such religious practices were naturally completed by a ferocious legislation, 



Fig 29. — Sacked Stone of Tizoc, in the Museum of Mexico. 





yet the people seem to have been of an extremely kind disposition, mild and 

 affectionate. " My dear son, my jewel, my fair feather ! " thus spoke the 

 mother to her child. According to Ixtlixochitl, a theft exceeding in value seven 

 maize cobs was punished with death. For whole communities, a violent seemed 

 far more probable than a natural ending ; this alone would sufficiently explain the 

 sense of sadness that had fallen on this unhappy nation, from which the divine 

 favour seemed to be withdrawn in inverse ratio to the number of their victims. 



The emperor Nezahualcoj'otl, sovereign of Texcoco, the crowned poet, who 

 staked his throne on a throw of dice, to show how little he cared for power, this 

 emperor expressed the universal sentiment when he depicted " the approaching 

 day when the gloomy fate, the great destroj'^er will be revealed." Even the 

 Spanish conquest, with the massacres and other scourges which accompanied it, 

 and the servitude by which it was followed, was a relief for the nations of Anahuac ; 



