History of the Conquest of Mexico (Vol. 1-4). William Hickling Prescott

History of the Conquest of Mexico (Vol. 1-4)

History of the Conquest of Mexico (Vol. 1-4) - William Hickling Prescott

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a real personage. The Jesuits in China, says Barrow, were appalled at finding in the mythology of that country the counterpart of the Virgo Deipara.” (Vol. i. p. 99, note.) The existence of similar religious ideas in remote regions, inhabited by different races, is an interesting subject of study, furnishing, as it does, one of the most important links in the great chain of communication which binds together the distant families of nations.

      {*} [The name may possibly have referred to the whispered oracles and intimations in dreams—such as “a little bird of the air” is still fabled to convey—by which, according to the legend, the deity had guided his people in their migrations and conquests. That it had a symbolical meaning will hardly be doubted, and M. Brasseur de Bourbourg, who had originally explained it as “Huitzil the Left-handed,”—the proper name of a deified hero with the addition of a descriptive epithet,—has since found one of too deep an import to be briefly expounded or easily understood. (Quatre Lettres sur le Mexique (Paris, 1868), p. 201, et al.) Mexitl, another name of the same deity, is translated “the hare of the aloes.” In some accounts the two are distinct personages. Mythological science rejects the legend, and regards the Aztec war-god as a “nature-deity,” a personification of the lightning, this being a natural type of warlike might, of which the common symbol, the serpent, was represented among the decorations of the idol. (Myths of the New World, p. 118.) More commonly he has been identified with the sun, and Mr. Tylor, while declining “to attempt a general solution of this inextricable compound parthenogenetic deity,” notices the association of his principal festival with the winter’s solstice, and the fact that his paste idol was then shot through with an arrow, as tending to show that the life and death of the deity were emblematic of the year’s, “while his functions of war-god may have been of later addition.” Primitive Culture, tom. ii. 279.—K.]

      Brinton, Myths of the New World, thinks Quetzalcoatl “a pure creature of the fancy.” Bandelier, whose presentation of the subject is most full and complete (Archæological Tour), agrees with Prescott that Quetzalcoatl began his career as leader of a migration southward. His principal sojourn was at Cholula. See also Payne, New World Called America, vol. i. pp. 588-596. P. de Roo, History of America before Columbus, vol. i. ch. xxii and xxiii, gives a very full presentation of the legend. He writes from the point of view of a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. His conclusion is that Quetzalcoatl was a Christian prelate, and that Christian doctrines were introduced into aboriginal America by European immigrants.—M.]

      {*} [Under the modern system of mythical interpretation, which has been applied by Dr. Brinton with singular force and ingenuity to the traditions of the New World, Quetzalcoatl, “the central figure of Toltec mythology,” with the corresponding figures found in the legends of the Mayas, Quichés, Peruvians, and other races, loses all personal existence, and becomes a creation of that primitive religious sentiment which clothed the uncomprehending powers of nature with the attributes of divinity. His name, “Bird-Serpent,” unites the emblems of the wind and the lightning. “He is both lord of the eastern light and the winds. As the former, he was born of a virgin in the land of Tula or Tlapallan, in the distant Orient, and was high-priest of that happy realm. The morning star was his symbol.... Like all the dawn heroes, he too was represented as of white complexion, clothed in long white robes, and, as most of the Aztec gods, with a full and flowing beard. When his earthly work was done, he too returned to the east, assigning as a reason that the sun, the ruler of Tlapallan, demanded his presence. But the real motive was that he had been overcome by Tezcatlipoca, otherwise called Yoalliehecatl, the wind or spirit of the night, who had descended from heaven by a spider’s web and presented his rival with a draught pretended to confer immortality, but, in fact, producing uncontrollable longing for home. For the wind and the light both depart when the gloaming draws near, or when the clouds spread their dark and shadowy webs along the mountains and pour the vivifying rain upon the fields.... Wherever he went, all manner of singing birds bore him company, emblems of the whistling breezes. When he finally disappeared in the far east, he sent back four trusty youths, who had ever shared his fortunes, incomparably swift and light of foot, with directions to divide the earth between them and rule it till he should return and resume his power.” (The Myths of the New World, p. 180, et seq.) So far as mere physical attributes are concerned, this analysis may be accepted as a satisfactory elucidation of the class of figures to which it relates. But the grand and distinguishing characteristic of these figures is the moral and intellectual eminence ascribed to them. They are invested with the highest qualities of humanity,—attributes neither drawn from the external phenomena of nature nor born of any rude sentiment of wonder and fear. Their lives and doctrines are in strong contrast with those of the ordinary divinities of the same or other lands, and they are objects not of a propitiatory worship, but of a pious veneration. Can we, then, assent to the conclusion that under this aspect also they were “wholly mythical,” “creations of the religious fancy,” “ideals summing up in themselves the best traits, the most approved virtues, of whole nations”? (Ibid., pp. 293, 294.) This would seem to imply that nations may attain to lofty conceptions of moral truth and excellence by a process of selection, without any standard or point of view furnished by living embodiments of the ideal. But this would be as impossible as to arrive at conceptions of the highest forms and ideas of art independently of the special genius and actual productions of the artist. In the one case, as in the other, the ideal is derived originally from examples shaped by finer and deeper intuitions than those of the masses. “Im Anfang war die That.” The mere fact, therefore, that the Mexican people recognized an exalted ideal of purity and wisdom is a sufficient proof that men had existed among them who displayed these qualities in an eminent degree. The status of their civilization, imperfect as it was, can be accounted for only in the same way. Comparative mythology may resolve into its original elements a personification of the forces of nature woven by the religious fancy of primitive races, but it cannot sever that chain of discoverers and civilizers by which mankind has been drawn from the abysses of savage ignorance, and by which its progress, when uninterrupted, has been always maintained.—K.]

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