Volltext Seite (XML)
18 AZT11C CIVILISATION. Goth, quaffing mead from the skulls of his slaughtered enemies, must have a very different mythology from that of the effeminate native of Hispaniola, loitering away his hours in idle pastimes, under the shadow if his bananas. At a later and more refined period, we sometimes find these primitive legends combined into a regular system under the hands of the poet, and the rude outline moulded into forms of ideal beauty, which are the objects of adoration in a credulous age, and the delight of all succeeding ones. Such w'ere the beautiful inventions of Hesiod and Homer, “ who,” says the Father of History, “ created the theogony of the Greeks ; ” an assertion not to be taken too literally, since it is hardly possible that any man should create a religious system for his nation. They only filled up the shadowy outlines of tradition w r ith the bright touches of their ow'n imaginations, until they had clothed them in beauty which kindled the imaginations of others. The power of the poet, indeed, may be felt in a similar way in a much riper period of society. To say nothing of the “ Divina Commedia,” who is there that rises from the perusal of “Paradise Lost” without feeling his own conceptions of the angelic hierarchy quickened by those of the inspired artist, and a new and sensible form, as it were, given to images which had before floated dim and undefined before him ? The last-mentioned period is succeeded by that of philosophy; which, disclaiming alike the legends of the primitive age, and the poetical embellishments of the succeeding one, seeks to shelter itself from the charge of impiety by giving an allegorical interpretation to the popular mythology, and thus to reconcile the latter with the genuine deductions of science. The Mexican religion had emerged from the first of the periods we have been considering, and, although little affected by poetical influences, had received a peculiar complexion from the priests, who had digested as thorough and burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in any nation. They had, moreover, thrown the veil of allegory over early tradition, and invested their deities with attributes, savouring much more of the grotesque conceptions of the eastern nations in the Old "World than of the lighter fictions of Greek mythology, in which the features of humanity, however exaggerated, were never wholly abandoned.* In contemplating the religious system of the Aztecs, one is struck with its apparent incongruity, as if some portion of it had emanated from a comparatively refined people, open to gentle influences, while the rest breathes a spirit of unmitigated ferocity. It naturally suggests the idea of two distinct sources, and authorises the belief that the Aztecs had inherited from their predecessors a milder faith, on which was afterwards engrafted their own mythology. The latter soon became dominant, and gave its dark colouring to the creeds of the conquered nations,—which the Mexicans, like the ancient Romans, seem willingly to have incorporated mto their own,—until the same funereal superstition settled over the farthest borders of Anahuac. * Tho Hod. Mouutstuart Elphinstone lias fallen Into a similar train of thought, in a comparison of the Hindoo and Greek Mythology, in his “ History of India,” published since the remarks in the text were written. The same chapter of this truly philosophic work suggests some curious points of resemblance to the Aztec religious institutions, tnnfc may furnish pertinent illustrations to tho mind bent on tracing the affinities of tho Asiatic and American race*.
