mind.[1] If we pass to the far higher culture of Peru, we find idols in full reverence, some of them complete figures, but the great deities of Sun and Moon figured by discs with human countenances, like those which to this day represent them in symbol among ourselves. As for the conquered neighbouring tribes brought under the dominion of the Incas, their idols were carried, half trophies and half hostages, to Cuzco, to rank among the inferior deities of the Peruvian Pantheon.[2] In Mexico, idolatry had attained to its full barbaric development. As in the Aztec mind the world swarmed with spiritual deities, so their material representatives, the idols, stood in the houses at the corners of the streets, on every hill and rock, to receive from passers-by some little offering — a nosegay, a whiff of incense, a drop or two of blood; while in the temples more huge and elaborate images enjoyed the dances and processions in their honour, were fed by the bloody sacrifice of men and beasts, and received the tribute and reverence paid to the great national gods.[3] Up to a certain point, such evidence bears upon the present question. We learn that the native races of the New World had idols, that those idols in some sort represented ancestral souls and other deities, and for them received adoration and sacrifice. But whether the native ideas of the connexion of spirit and image were obscure, or whether the foreign observers did not get at these ideas, or partly for both reasons, there is a general want of express statement how far the idols of America remained mere symbols or portraits, or how far they had come to be considered the animated bodies of the gods.
It is not always thus, however. In the island regions of
- ↑ Fernando Colombo, 'Vita del Amm. Cristoforo Colombo,' Venice, 1571, p. 127, &c.; and 'Life of Colon,' in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 84. Herrera, dec. i. iii. 3. Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' pp. 421-4. Waitz, vol. iii. p. 384; J. G. Müller, pp. 171-6, 182, 210, 232.
- ↑ Prescott, 'Peru,' vol. i. pp. 71, 89; Waitz, vol. iv. p. 458; J. G. Müller, pp. 322, 371.
- ↑ Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. p. 486; Waitz, vol. iv. p. 148; J. G. Müller, p. 642.
