Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru

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We shall begin our study with Mexico. But a few preliminary ethnographical remarks are indispensable. I spare you the catalogue of the numerous sources and documents from which...

Such is the common religious basis, which we have simply sketched in its most general outlines, and upon which the more elaborate and sombre religion of the Aztecs, which we sha...

The third great deity is Quetzalcoatl, that is to say "the feathered serpent," or "the serpent-bird;" and it is specially noteworthy, in connection with the elevated rank which...

This being granted, two rival tendencies must be reckoned with. In the first place, moral development, with its influence on religious ideas, worked towards the suppression of t...

But the surprise we experience in noting all these points of resemblance to the religious institutions of the Old World, perhaps reaches its culminating point when we learn that...

I will not weary you in this case, any more than in that of Mexico, with the enumeration of the authors to whom we must go for information on the political and religious history...

The point at which the legend preserved by Garcilasso is clearly at fault, is in its claim for the Incas as the first and only civilizers of Peru. We shall presently meet with o...

There were men on the earth before the Sun appeared, and the temples of Viracocha, for instance, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, are older than the Sun. One day Viracocha rose o...

The ordinary occupations of the Virgins of the Sun consisted in making garments for the members of the imperial family and tapestries destined to adorn the temples and palaces,...

There was likewise a sacerdotal confession, but it was an institution of state and of police rather than a sacrament with a moral purpose. The great object was to discover all a...

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, it only remains for me to bid you farewell, while giving you my warmest thanks for the perseverance, the encouragement and the sympathy, with whic...

[79] This hymn was found by _Garcilasso_ (see Lib. ii. cap. xvii., pp. 50, 51, in Rycaut's translation) among the papers of Father _Blas Valera_, and has been freed by _Tschudi_...