The Myths of the New World

Ximenes, Origen de los Indios de Guatemala, p. 192; Acosta, Hist. of the New World, lib. v. chap. 18.

442

Joseph de Maistre, Eclaircissement sur les Sacrifices; Trench, Hulsean Lectures, p. 180. The famed Abbé Lammenaais and Professor Sepp, of Munich, with these two writers, may be taken as the chief exponents of a school of mythologists, all of whom start from the theories first laid down by Count de Maistre in his Soirées de St. Petersbourg. To them the strongest proof of Christianity lies in the traditions and observances of heathendom. For these show the wants of the religious sense, and Christianity, they maintain, purifies and satisfies them all. The rites, symbols, and legends of every natural religion, they say, are true and not false; all that is required is to assign them their proper places and their real meaning. Therefore the strange resemblances in heathen myths to what is revealed in the Scriptures, as well as the ethical anticipations which have been found in ancient philosophies, all, so far from proving that Christianity is a natural product of the human mind, in fact, are confirmations of it, unconscious prophecies, and presentiments of the truth.

443

Alfred Maury, La Magie et l’Astrologie dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Age, p. 8: Paris, 1860.

444

Waitz, Anthropologie, i. pp. 325, 465.

445

So says Dr. Waitz, ibid., p. 465.

446

Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. p. 143.

447

L’Homme Américain, ii. p. 319.

448

Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, liv. iii. chaps. 1 and 2.

449

Sahagun, Hist. de la Nueva España, lib. x. cap. 29.

450

Novalis, Schriften, i. p. 244: Berlin, 1837.

451

Ibid., p. 267.

452

Hist. de la Civilisation en France, i. pp. 122, 130.

453

Narrative of J. R. Jewett among the Savages of Nootka Sound, p. 121.

454

Rel. de la Nouv. France, An 1636, p. 109.

455

Ibid., An 1670, p. 99.

456

Geronimo de Ore, Symbolo Catholico Indiano, chap, ix., quoted by Ternaux-Compans. De Ore was a native of Peru and held the position of Professor of Theology in Cuzco in the latter half of the sixteenth century. He was a man of great erudition, and there need be no hesitation in accepting this extraordinary prayer as genuine. For his life and writings see Nic. Antonio, Bib. Hisp. Nova, tom. ii. p. 43.

457

Sahagun, Hist. de la Nueva España, lib. vi. caps. 1, 4.

458

Morse, Rep. on the Ind. Tribes, App. p. 250.

459

Cogolludo, Hist. de Yucathan, lib. iv. cap. 9. Compare Stephens, Travs. in Yucatan, ii. p. 122, who describes the remains of these roads as they now exist.

460

Rivero and Tschudi, Antiqs. of Peru, p. 162.

461

La Vega, Hist. des Incas, lib. vi. chap. 30; Xeres, Rel de la Conq. du Pérou, p. 151; Let. sur les Superstit. du Pérou, p. 98, and others.