The two religions alike exhibit an initial penetration of religion by the moral idea. They are at bottom two theocracies, the laws and institutions of which rest upon the gods themselves, though the theocratic form is far more prominent in Peru than in Mexico. They share the advantages of a theocracy for a nascent civilization, and its disadvantages for one that has already reached a certain development. It was the theocratic and sacerdotal conception that maintained and enforced the religious butchery of which you have heard in Mexico, and which transformed Peru into one enormous convent, where no one had any will or any initiative of his own. For the same reason, asceticism, the principle that confuses, through an illusion we can easily understand, the moral act itself with the suffering that accompanies it, shows itself in both religions, but especially in that of Mexico; and convents that startle us by their resemblance to those of Buddhism and Christianity rise in either realm. But this mutual interpenetration of the religious and moral ideas is still quite rudimentary. The prevailing tone of the religion is given by the self-seeking and purely calculating principle, aiming no doubt at a certain mystic satisfaction (for at every stage of religion this moving principle has been most powerful and fruitful), but likewise seeking material advantages without any scruple as to the means; and those monstrous forms of transubstantiation which the Mexican thought he was bringing about when he ate of the same human flesh which he offered to his gods, are typical of the period in which religion pursued its purpose of union with the deity, regardless of the protests of the moral sense and of humanity.