from the fact that man is fundamentally the same everywhere. To take an instance from Peru. We find the Incas there calling themselves “Child of the Sun,” and marrying their own sisters, just as the Egyptian kings did. But this proves nothing whatever as to connexion between the two people. The worship of the Sun, the giver of light and heat, may easily spring up among different people without any external teaching; and what more natural, among imperfectly civilized tribes, than that the monarch should claim relationship with the divinity? And the second custom was introduced that the royal race might be kept unmixed.
Thus, when we find the Aztecs burning incense before their gods, kings, and great men, and propitiating their deities with human sacrifices, we can conclude nothing from this. But we find them baptizing their children, anointing their kings, and sprinkling them with holy water, punishing the crime of adultery by stoning the criminals to death, and practising several other Old World usages of which I have already spoken. We must give some weight to these coincidences.