f the
Aztecs, as explained by the most competent survivors of the Conquest.]

The myth which I have here given in brief is a prominent one in Aztec
cosmogony, and is known as that of the Ages of the World or the Suns. The
opinion was widely accepted that the present is the fifth age or period of
the world's history; that it has already undergone four destructions by
various causes, and that the present period is also to terminate in
another such catastrophe. The agents of such universal ruin have been a
great flood, a world-wide conflagration, frightful tornadoes and famine,
earthquakes and wild beasts, and hence the Ages, Suns or Periods were
called respectively, from their terminations, those of Water, Fire, Air
and Earth. As we do not know the destiny of the fifth, the present one, it
has as yet no name.

I shall not attempt to go into the details of this myth, the less so as it
has recently been analyzed with much minuteness by the Mexican antiquary
Chavero.[1] I will merely point out that it is too closely identified with
a great many similar myths for us to be allowed to seek an origin for it
peculiar to Mexican or even American soil. We can turn to the Tualati who
live in Oregon, and they will tell us of the four creations and
destructions of mankind; how at the end of the first Age all human beings
were changed into stars; at the end of the second they became stones; at
the end of the third into fishes; and at the close of the fourth they
disappeared, to give place to the tribes that now inhabit the world.[2] Or
we can read from the cuneiform inscriptions of ancient Babylon, and find
the four destructions of the race there specified, as by a flood, by wild
beasts, by famine and by pestilence.[3]

[Footnote 1: Alfredo Chavero, _La Piedra del Sol_, in the _Anales del
Museo Nacional_, Tom. i, p. 353, et seq.]

[Footnote 2: A.S. Gatschet, _The Four Creations of Mankind_, a Tualati
myth, in _Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washington_, Vol.
i, p. 60 (1881).]

[Footnote 3: Paul Haupt, _Der Keilinschriftliche Sintfluthbericht_, p. 17
(Leipzig, 1881).]

The explanation which I have to give of these coincidences--which could
easily be increased--is that the number four was chosen as that of the
four cardinal points, and that the fifth or present age, that in which we
live, is that which is ruled by the ruler of the four points, by the
Spirit of Light, who was believed to govern them, as, in fact, the