Through these various meanings a good defence can be made of several different translations of the name, and probably it bore even to the natives different meanings at different times. I am inclined to believe that the original sense was that advocated by Becerra in the seventeenth century, and adopted by Veitia in the eighteenth, both competent Aztec scholars.[1] They translate Quetzalcoatl as "the admirable twin," and though their notion that this refers to Thomas Didymus, the Apostle, does not meet my views, I believe they were right in their etymology. The reference is to the duplicate nature of the Light-God as seen in the setting and rising sun, the sun of to-day and yesterday, the same yet different. This has its parallels in many other mythologies.[2] [Footnote 1: Becerra, _Felicidad de Méjico_, 1685, quoted in Veitia, _Historia del Origen de las Gentes que poblaron la América Septentrional_, cap. XIX.] [Footnote 2: In the Egyptian "Book of the Dead," Ra, the Sun-God, says, "I am a soul and its twins," or, "My soul is becoming two twins." "This means that the soul of the sun-god is one, but, now that it is born again, it divides into two principal forms. Ra was worshipped at An, under his two prominent manifestations, as Tum the primal god, or more definitely, god of the sun at evening, and as Harmachis, god of the new sun, the sun at dawn." Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, p. 80.] The correctness of this supposition seems to be shown by a prevailing superstition among the Aztecs about twins, and which strikingly illustrates the uniformity of mythological conceptions throughout the world. All readers are familiar with the twins Romulus and Remus in Roman story, one of whom was fated to destroy their grandfather Amulius; with Edipus and Telephos, whose father Laios, was warned that his death would be by one of his children; with Theseus and Peirithoos, the former destined to cause the suicide of his father Aigeus; and with many more such myths. They can be traced, without room for doubt, back to simple expressions of the fact that the morning and the evening of the one day can only come when the previous day is past and gone; expressed figuratively by the statement that any one day must destroy its predecessor. This led to the stories of "the fatal children," which we find so frequent in Aryan mythology.[1] [Footnote 1: Sir George W. Cox, _The Science of Comparative Mythology and Folk Lore_, pp. 14, 83, 130, etc.] The Aztecs were a coarse and bloody race, and carried out their superstitions without remorse. Based, no doubt, on this mythical expression of a natural occurrence, they had the belief that if twins were allowed to live, one or the other of them would kill and eat his father or mother; therefore, it was their custom when such were brought into the world to destroy one of them.[1] [Footnote 1: Gerónimo de Mendieta, _Historia Eclesiastica Indiana_. Lib. II, cap. XIX.]