Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 1.djvu/36

 that, just as it was necessary that the human vehicle of the divine soul should be a youth of bodily perfection, so it was of paramount importance that he should be killed, and the soul transferred to another perfect body, before the least trace of physical infirmity or waning vigour impaired the virility of the deity upon whom the general prosperity, not only of the tribe, but of mankind in general, was supposed to depend.

Nor was it only in the case of Tezcatlipoca that the victim was identified with the god; the same underlying idea may be observed in certain sacrifices to the goddesses of fertility and to Xipe. Viewed in the light of these facts, the ceremonial cannibalism which accompanied some of the festivals becomes far less repulsive, since it was an instance of the practice of eating the god which is still very widely distributed throughout mankind, and which appears in a form more intelligible to Prescott in the ceremonies at which small images of the deity, made of maize-flour and other vegetable products, were devoured by the worshippers.

Prescott omits many of the sacrificial rites, since he could see in them nothing but the promptings of vain and bloodthirsty cruelty. In actuality, however, they have another aspect. Thus, the women sacrificed to the Fertility-goddesses were usually decapitated, a rite symbolising the reaping of a maize-ear, and supposed, in some mystic manner, to ensure a good harvest. In a sacrifice to Xipe, at which the victim was shot to death with arrows, the blood which streamed upon the ground represented, and was believed to promote, a copious rainfall, and so to bring prosperity to the fields.

One important feature of Mexican religion, however, Prescott saw clearly, the very close connection between it and war, and the highly ceremonial nature of the latter. The Aztec believed that only by the hearts of men offered in sacrifice could the vigour of the gods be sustained. War therefore was a necessity, and they fought not to kill but to capture. This belief, which, as Prescott points out, more than once saved the Spaniards from annihilation, coloured the whole of Aztec policy towards the surrounding peoples with whom they came in contact. They made no attempt to weld the neighbouring tribes into a solid empire, for that, if successful, would have brought peace. In the days of their greatest power they exercised no more than a loose suzerainty over the dependent cities, which were left very much to their own devices, provided that they were