PRELIMINARY. 237 



of affection exists between husband and wife, or between 

 parents and children.&quot; The New World, too, furnished 



when it was discovered, like evidence. Having great cities 

 of 120,000 houses, the Mexicans had also cannibal gods, 

 whose idols were fed on warm, reeking, human flesh, thrust 

 into their mouths wars being made purposely to supply 

 victims for them ; and with skill to build vast and stately 

 temples, there went the immolation of two thousand five 

 hundred persons annually, in &quot;Mexico and adjacent towns 

 alone, and of a far greater number throughout the country at 

 large. Similarly in the populous Central American States, 

 sufficiently civilized to have a developed system of calcula 

 tion, a regular calendar, books, maps, &c., there were exten 

 sive sacrifices of prisoners, slaves, children, whose hearts 

 were torn out and offered palpitating on altars, and who, in 

 other cases, were flayed alive and their skins used as dancing- 

 dresses by the priests. 



Nor need we seek in remote regions or among alien races, 

 for proofs that there does not exist a necessary connexion 

 between the social types classed as civilized and those 

 higher sentiments which we commonly associate with civili 

 zation. The mutilations of prisoners exhibited on Assyrian 

 sculptures are not surpassed in cruelty by any we find among 

 the most bloodthirsty of wild races ; and Eameses II., who 

 delighted in having himself sculptured on temple-walls 

 throughout Egypt as holding a dozen captives by the hair, 

 and striking off their heads at a blow, slaughtered during his 

 conquests more human beings than a thousand chiefs of 

 savage tribes put together. The tortures inflicted on cap 

 tured enemies by Red Indians are not greater than were 

 those inflicted of old on felons by crucifixion, or on suspected 

 rebels by sewing them up in the hides of slaughtered animals, 

 or on heretics by smearing them over with combustibles and 

 setting fire to them. The Damaras, described as so heartless 

 that they laugh on seeing one of their number killed by a 

 wild beast, are not worse than were the Romans, who gratified 



