The Peruvians were ignorant of morality as we appreciate the term. That they were, however, a most moral people there is every evidence. But as has been before pointed out, all crime was a direct offence against the majesty of the Inca, who, as viceroy of the Sun on earth, had been blasphemed by the breaking of his law. Under such a régime the true significance of sin was bound to be obscured, if not altogether lost. Terror took the place of conscience, and the necessity for implicit obedience gave no scope to the true moral sense--probably to the detriment of the entire community. The political and religious history of Peru is unique in the annals of mankind, and its study offers a startling instance of what prolonged isolation may work in the mind of man. That the Peruvian mind, isolated in a remote part of the world as it was, was never wholly blind to the existence of a great and beneficent creative Power, the degradation of a cramping theocracy notwithstanding, is triumphant proof that the knowledge of that Power is a thing inalienable from the mind of man. CHAPTER VI THE QUESTION OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE UPON THE RELIGIONS OF AMERICA The space at my disposal for dealing with this most difficult of all questions is such as will enable me only to outline its salient points. As I pointed out at the beginning of the first chapter, the question of the origins of the American religions was almost identical with that of the origins of the American race itself. That the Red Man was not the aboriginal inhabitant of the American continent, but supplanted a race with Eskimo affinities, is extremely probable. At all events, the 'Skraelings,' with whom the early Norse discoverers of America had dealings, were not described by them as in any way resembling the North American Indian of later times. If this be granted--and Indian folklore would seem to strengthen the hypothesis--we must then find some other home for the Red Man than the prairies of North-east America for the five centuries between the Norse and Columbian discoveries. He may, of course, have dwelt in the north-west of the continent, a solution of the problem which appears to me highly feasible. That his affinities are Mongolian it would be absurd to dispute; but--and this is of supreme importance--these affinities are of so archaic an origin as to preclude all likelihood of any important or numerous Asiatic immigration occurring for many centuries before either the Norse or Columbian discovery.