As civilization progressed, we are told that a separate order of men, with a liberal provision for their subsistence, was set apart for religious service, and a minute and magnificent ceremonial contrived, which challenged comparison with that of the most polished nations of Christendom. This was the case with the natives of Quita, Bogota, and others inhabiting the highlands of South America, but especially with the Peruvians, who claimed a divine origin for the founders of their empire, whose laws rested on a divine sanction, and whose domestic institutions and foreign wars were directed to preserve and to propagate their faiths. Religion was the basis of their polity, the condition of their social existence. The government of the Incas was essentially a lay theocracy. The Peruvians believed in the future existence of the soul and the resurrection of the body. They had faith in a Hell, located in the earth's centre, and a Heaven, in which the good would revel in a life of luxury, tranquillity, and ease. The wicked, however, were not to be hopelessly damned and tormented for everlasting, but were to expiate their crimes by ages of wearisome labour. They believed, also, in an evil principle or spirit, called Cupay, to whom, however, they paid no more attention than an ordinary Christian does to the Devil. The great men were entombed after death, and were commonly buried with the chief things which they required on earth. Sometimes a chieftain was buried, not only with his treasures, but with his wives and domestics. Frequently, over the dead, vast mounds were raised, which were honeycombed, subsequently, with cells for the burial of others. Cairns were as common in that part of the New World as they have been in the Old, and the majority of buildings found at the present day in Peru have been connected with funereal pomp.