Students of religious phenomena not infrequently show distaste for the deeper consideration of the Mexican faith, not only because of the difficulties which beset the fuller study of this interesting phase of human belief in the eternal verities, but also, perhaps, because of the “diabolic” reputation which it has achieved, and the grisly horrors to which it is thought those who examine it must perforce accustom themselves. It is certainly not the most obviously prepossessing of the world’s religions. Yet if a due allowance be made for the earnestness of its priests and people in the strict observance of a system the hereditary burden of which no one man or generation could hope to remove, and the religion of the Aztecâ be viewed in a liberal and tolerant spirit, those who are sufficiently painstaking in their scrutiny of it will in time find themselves richly rewarded. Not only does it abound in valuable evidences for the enrichment of the study of religious science and tradition, but by degrees its astonishing beauty of colour and wealth of symbolic variety will appeal to the student with all the enchantment of discovery. The echoes of the sacred drum of serpent-skin reverberating from the lofty pyramid of Uitzilopochtli, and passing above the mysterious city of Tenochtitlan with all the majesty of Olympic thunder, will seem not less eloquent of the soul of a vanished faith than do the memories of the choral chants of Hellas. And if the recollection of the picturesque but terrible rites of this gifted, imaginative, and not undistinguished people harrows the feelings, does it not arouse in us that fatal consciousness of man’s helplessness before the gods, which primitive religion invariably professes and which reason almost seems to uphold? CHAPTER II COSMOGONY Accounts of the creation of the world and of man, even as handed down to us by those writers on Mexican mythology who had the best opportunities for collecting them, are prone to vagueness, and differ so materially one from another that we will probably not be in error if we impute their inconsistencies to a variety of local origins. As regards the agencies by whom the creation or reconstruction of the earth was accomplished, we are not in doubt, for certain passages in the Interpretative Codices find almost exact corroboration in the creation story contained in the Popol Vuh, the mythic book of the Quiche of Guatemala (which was unknown to the interpreters of the Mexican Codices), as well as in similar works of Maya origin.