. The myths of Mexico and Peru. laws and religions prove them to have been the equalsof most of the Asiatic nations of antiquity, and thesuperiors of the primitive races of Europe, who enteredinto the heritage of civilisation through the gatewayof the East. The aborigines of ancient Americahad evolved for themselves a system of writing whichat the period of their discovery was approaching thealphabetic type, a mathematical system unique andby no means despicable, and an architectural sciencein some respects superior to any of which the OldWorld could boast. Their legal codes were reason-able a
. The myths of Mexico and Peru. laws and religions prove them to have been the equalsof most of the Asiatic nations of antiquity, and thesuperiors of the primitive races of Europe, who enteredinto the heritage of civilisation through the gatewayof the East. The aborigines of ancient Americahad evolved for themselves a system of writing whichat the period of their discovery was approaching thealphabetic type, a mathematical system unique andby no means despicable, and an architectural sciencein some respects superior to any of which the OldWorld could boast. Their legal codes were reason-able and founded upon justice ; and if their religionswere tainted with cruelty, it was a cruelty which theyregarded as inevitable, and as the doom placed uponthem by sanguinary and Insatiable deities and not byany human agency. In comparing the myths of the American raceswith the deathless stories of Olympus or the scarcelyless classic tales of India, frequent resemblances andanalogies cannot fail to present themselves, and these328. He saw a very beautiful girl crying bitterly William Sewell 328 CONCLUSION are of value as illustrating the circumstance that inevery quarter of the globe the mind of man has shapedfor itself a system of faith based upon similar prin-ciples. But in the perusal of the myths and beliefs ofMexico and Peru we are also struck with the strange-ness and remoteness alike of their subject-matter andthe type of thought which they present. The resultof centuries of isolation is evident in a profound contrastof atmosphere. It seems almost as if we stood fora space upon the dim shores of another planet, spec-tators of the doings of a race of whose modes otthought and feeling we were entirely ignorant. For generations these stories have been hidden,along with the memory of the gods and folk of whomthey tell, beneath a thick dust of neglect, displaced hereand there only by the efforts of antiquarians workingsingly and unaided. Nowadays many well-equippedstudents are s
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