o be drawn.--Morality not derived from
religion.--The positive side of natural religions in incarnations of
divinity.--Examples.--Prayers as indices of religious
progress.--Religion and social advancement.--Conclusion 287

THE MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE RED RACE.

Natural religions the unaided attempts of man to find out God,
modified by peculiarities of race and nation.--The peculiarities of
the red race: 1. Its languages unfriendly to abstract ideas. Native
modes of writing by means of pictures, symbols, objects, and
phonetic signs. These various methods compared in their influence
on the intellectual faculties. 2. Its isolation, unique in the
history of the world. 3. Beyond all others, a hunting
race.--Principal linguistic subdivisions: 1. The Eskimos. 2. The
Athapascas. 3. The Algonkins and Iroquois. 4. The Apalachian
tribes. 5. The Dakotas. 6. The Aztecs. 7. The Mayas. 8. The
Muyscas. 9. The Quichuas. 10. The Caribs and Tupis. 11. The
Araucanians.--General course of migrations.--Age of man in
America.--Unity of type in the red race.

When Paul, at the request of the philosophers of Athens, explained to
them his views on divine things, he asserted, among other startling
novelties, that "God has made of one blood all nations of the earth,
that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and
find him, though he is not far from every one of us."

Here was an orator advocating the unity of the human species, affirming
that the chief end of man is to develop an innate idea of God, and that
all religions, except the one he preached, were examples of more or
less unsuccessful attempts to do so. No wonder the Athenians, who
acknowledged no kinship to barbarians, who looked dubiously at the
doctrine of innate ideas, and were divided in opinion as to whether
their mythology was a shrewd device of legislators to keep the populace
in subjection, a veiled natural philosophy, or the celestial reflex of
their own history, mocked at such a babbler and went their ways. The
generations of philosophers that followed them partook of their doubts
and approved their opinions, quite down to our own times. But now, after
weighing the question maturely, we are compelled to admit that the
Apostle was not so wide of the mark after all--that, in fact, the latest
and best authorities, with