Not only are the Mexican and Asiatic systems alike in the singular principle they go upon, but there are resemblances in the signs used that seem too close for chance.[20] The other arguments which tend to prove that the Mexicans either came from the Old World or had in some way been brought into connexion with tribes from thence, are principally founded on coincidences in customs and traditions.  We must be careful to eliminate from them all such as we can imagine to have originated from the same outward causes at work in both hemispheres, and 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.

Of some of the supposed Aztec Bible-traditions I have already spoken in no very high terms.  There is another tradition, however, resting upon unimpeachable evidence, which relates the occurrence of a series of destructions and regenerations of the world, and recalls in the most striking manner the Indian cosmogony; and, when added to the argument from the similarity of the systems of astronomical notation of Mexico and Asia, goes far towards proving a more or less remote connection between the inhabitants of the two continents.

There is another side to the question, however, as has been stated already.  How could the Mexicans have had these traditions and customs from the Old World, and not have got the knowledge of some of the commonest arts of life from the same source?  As I have said, they do not seem to have known the proper way of putting the handle on to a stone-hammer; and, though they used bronze, they had not applied it to making such things as knives and spear-heads.  They had no beasts of burden; and, though there were animals in the country which they probably might have domesticated and milked, they had no idea of anything of the kind.  They had oil, and employed it for various purposes, but had no notion of using it or wax for burning.  They lighted their houses with pine-torches; and in fact the Aztec name for a pine-torch—­ocotl—­was transferred to candles when they were introduced.