Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/29

Rh fruits of the earth and the allied gods of the elements quickly overshadow and surpass the older gods in the popular imagination—these beings who are worshipped by a people in the state of the nomadic hunter, and which now sink to a minor position in the tribal pantheon. This worship of the food-gods will be found to lie at the root of Mexican mythology. The elemental gods of wind and sun have undoubtedly first place in that system, but it is chiefly so because of their paramount importance in the phenomena of growth and fructification. Even Huitzilopochtli, the war-god of Mexico, had an agricultural significance.

Enough has been said to exhibit the Mexican mythology as a religious system which had advanced to a stage typical of a people whose chief business in life was the tilling of the earth. It does not exhibit those figures of a suaver cultus, such as that of Greece, where, side by side with deities of the soil, other gods had arisen who symbolised higher national ideals in love and art, such as Aphrodite or Apollo. Although Mexico had its goddess of Sexual Indulgence and its craft gods, it is very questionable whether the latter would ever have evolved into higher types. The artistic consciousness of the Mexican, although virile and original—much more so than the lack-lustre artistry of Hellas, with its passionless and unhuman types—was yet lacking in the Hellenic quality of idealty (unless its symbolism might be said to partake of that quality) and in the Hellenic sense of beauty. But it possessed a grotesque sense of beauty peculiarly its own, which is by no means to be regarded as ugliness run mad.

The temples where the dreadful rites which stained the Mexican religion were celebrated were known as teocallis or "houses of god," and had evidently been evolved from the idea of the open-air altar. They were pyramidal in shape and consisted of several platforms, one superimposed upon the other, reaching a considerable height, usually 80 or 100ft. A staircase