ped with the seal
of religion, which have been preserved, as they were in vogue in Anahuac,
Utatlan, Peru and other localities.[1] Any one who peruses these will see
that the great moral principles, the radical doctrines of individual
virtue, were clearly recognized and deliberately enforced as divine and
civil precepts in these communities. Moreover, they were generally and
cheerfully obeyed, and the people of many of these lands were industrious,
peaceable, moral, and happy, far more so than they have ever been since.

[Footnote 1: The reader willing to pursue the argument further can find
these collections of ancient American laws in Sahagun, _Historia de Nueva
Espana_, for Mexico; in Geronimo Roman, _Republica de las Indias
Occidentales_, for Utatlan and other nations; for Peru in the _Relacion
del Origen, Descendencia, Politica, y Gobierno de los Incas, por el
licenciado Fernando de Santillan_ (published at Madrid. 1879); and for the
Muyscas, in Piedrahita, _Hist. Gen. del Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, Lib. ii,
cap. v.]

There was also a manifest progress in the definition of the idea of God,
that is, of a single infinite intelligence as the source and controlling
power of phenomena. We have it on record that in Peru this was the direct
fruit of the myth of Viracocha. It is related that the Inca Yupangui
published to his people that to him had appeared Viracocha, with
admonition that he alone was lord of the world, and creator of all things;
that he had made the heavens, the sun, and man; and that it was not right
that these, his works, should receive equal homage with himself.
Therefore, the Inca decreed that the image of Viracocha should thereafter
be assigned supremacy to those of all other divinities, and that no
tribute nor sacrifice should be paid to him, for He was master of all the
earth, and could take from it as he chose.[1] This was evidently a direct
attempt on the part of an enlightened ruler to lift his people from a
lower to a higher form of religion, from idolatry to theism. The Inca even
went so far as to banish all images of Viracocha from his temples, so that
this, the greatest of gods, should be worshiped as an immaterial spirit
only.

[Footnote 1: P. Joseph de Acosta, _Historia Natural y Moral de las
Indias_, Lib. vi, cap. 31 (Barcelona, 1591).]

A parallel instance is presented in Aztec annals. Nezahualcoyotzin, an
enlightened ruler of Tezcuco, about 1450, was both a philosopher and a
poet, and