the cult entirely differed from the metropolitan exemplar.39 This being so, we are as fully justified in speaking of a Mexican religion as we are in alluding to an Italic or a Hellenic religion, and perhaps more so than in extending the analogy to Egypt, where anything like homogeneity in either theology or popular worship appears never to have been attained. We find, then, that the religion of ancient Mexico, as known at the Conquest period, was the outcome of later religious and ethical impulses brought to bear upon a simple rain-cult, which, judging from the atmospheric conditions essential to it, must have been indigenous to the country. Although the cults of its several deities still retained some measure of distinctiveness, all had long before been amalgamated in what was really a national faith. There are signs, too, that a fully developed pantheon had been evolved, which mirrored an elaborate social system in caste, rank, and guild, but the mythical material from which this might have been reconstructed is only partly available. We find, too, that practically every god in the Mexican hierarchy, whatever his original status, was in some manner connected with the rain-cult. Indeed, the rain-cult is the central and coalescing factor in Mexican religion, its nucleus and foundation. As might be expected, most of the deities of agricultural growth appear to be of either Toltec or alien origin. Thus, Chicomecoatl was Toltec, while Tlazolteotl, Xochiquetzal, Xilonen, Cinteotl, and Xipe were all alien deities of the older settled peoples, but what their relationship to the three great cults of Mexico may have been is not apparent. Most of these deities appear in the tonalamatl, so that their worship must have been adopted at a comparatively early date.
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