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 ?' 



" Then they looked, and saw all that there was beneath 

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

 Moulder, saying, ' 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 !' "* 



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 Chrjstophe Colomb, ecrite sur des docu- 

 ments originaux et entierement medits, puises aux anciennes archives des 

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

 ftvec carte et figures. 



