pean style, with a view to convincing us that his ancestors were monotheistic philosophers, but which nevertheless bear the marks of a certain authenticity. For the reasoning which Garcilasso puts into the mouth of the Incas closely resembles what would naturally commend itself to the mind of a pagan who should once ask himself whether the visible phenomenon, the Sun, which he adored, was really as living, as conscious, as personal, as they said. Thus the Inca Tupac Yupanqui (fifteenth century) is said to have reasoned thus:[1]
"They say that the Sun lives, and that he does everything. But when one does anything, he is near to the thing he does; whereas many things take place while the Sun is absent. It therefore cannot be he who does everything. And again, if he were a living being, would he not be wearied by his perpetual journeyings? If he were alive, he would experience fatigue, as we do; and if he were free, he would visit other parts of the heavens which he never traverses. In truth, he seems like a thing held to its task that always measures the same course, or like an arrow that flies where it is shot and not where it wills itself."
- ↑ Garcilasso, Lib. viii. cap. viii. Garcilasso says that he translates this passage, word for word, from the Latin MS. of the Jesuit Father, Blas Valera.
