“Who is the god to whom we shall offer sacrifice? “He who gives life; he who gives strength; whose command all the bright gods revere; whose light is immortality; whose shadow is death. He who through his power is the one god of the breathing and awakening world.... He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm.... He who measured out the light in the air, ... wherever the mighty water clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose he who is the sole life of the bright gods.... He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, look up, trembling inwardly.... “May he not destroy us! He, the creator of the earth; he, the righteous, who created heaven."--_Hymn of Indian Sun-worship from the Rig-Veda._ Primitive peoples usually adore that natural force which is their greatest good. Gratitude for benefits conferred is the basis of all pagan religion. Primitive peoples also worship the sky and the bright objects within it. Sun worshippers combine the two. Inti, the Sun, child of the Universal Spirit, is his mighty emblem, a symbol of his uncreated glory, the quickening principle in nature, the great wizard of Peru, the only source of vitality upon earth, by whose energy the winds arise, the glaciers slide over the mountains, by whose energy even the rain descends, the rivers swell, and cascades leap through the valleys down toward the sea. In how much more real a sense than the Incas knew is Peru the land of the sun! The Sun, ruler of the stars, together with Quilla, the Moon, ruler of winds and waters, his sister, wife, and queen, created beautiful Chasca, the Dawn, “whose time was the gloaming and twilight, whose messengers the fleecy clouds which sail through the sky ... and who, when he shakes his clustering hair, drops noiselessly pearls of dew on the green grass fields.” The light-rays emanating from the Sun and the morning star of double course are his messengers, bringing strength and power. They precede to announce his coming in the morning, and follow him as, by the force of his power and heat, the sea parts in the evening to receive him.