Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/27

Rh the perils of a minority and, as the throne was invariably filled by a brother or nephew of the lately deceased monarch the continuance of the royal line was assured. The emperor was usually selected because of his military prowess and sacerdotal experience, a knowledge of matters warlike and religious being regarded as essential in a ruler. Thus the ill-fated Motecuhzoma, besides being an experienced soldier, had been trained exhaustively in the tenets of the priesthood, which perhaps accounts for the superstitious and fatalistic attitude he adopted upon the arrival of the Spaniards in Anahuac. Justice was dealt with an even hand by varying grades of tribunals, which sat constantly and were answerable to none, the emperor not excepted, for their verdict. Corruption on the part of a legal official was punishable by death. The moral code was high, and such crimes against social decency as drunkenness and immorality were rigorously punished.

The religion which instigated this stern moral code was of a highly composite character, mingling as it did the tenets of a peaceful and idealistic cult with the sacerdotal practices and sanguinary ritual of a people who were still in a condition of mental barbarism. This faith probably drew its high ideals from that of the older Toltec race, who may have fused with the Nahua immigrants to the Mexican plateau. The influence of this cultivated people was seen in the worship of Quetzalcoatl, a god possessing solar and atmospheric attributes, whose cult, if in later times it became stained with the abominations of human sacrifice, showed many signs of an earlier repugnance to ceremonial cannibalism. Not so the other cults of Anahuac, whose gods were tutelar genii of the Aztec people, and who were supposed to have guided them to their possessions in the Valley of Mexico. These deities, the most important of whom were Tezcatlipoca, a god of the air (who afterwards developed into the chief divinity of the Aztec pantheon), and Tlaloc, god of waters,