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To Garcilasso’s mind, Peruvian religion seems to be divided into two periods—­the age before, and the age which followed the accession of the Incas, and their establishment of sun-worship as the creed of the State.  In the earlier period, the pre-Inca period, he tells us ’an Indian was not accounted honourable unless he was descended from a fountain, river, or lake, or even from the sea, or from a wild animal, such as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey.’ {104a} To these worshipful creatures ’men offered what they usually saw them eat’ (i. 53).  But men were not content to adore large and dangerous animals.  ’There was not an animal, how vile and filthy soever, that they did not worship as a god,’ including ’lizards, toads, and frogs.’  In the midst of these superstitions the Incas appeared.  Just as the tribes claimed descent from animals, great or small, so the Incas drew their pedigree from the sun, which they adored like the gens of the Aurelii in Rome. {104b} Thus every Indian had his pacarissa, or, as the North American Indians say, totem, {105a} a natural object from which he claimed descent, and which, in a certain degree, he worshipped.  Though sun-worship became the established religion, worship of the animal pacarissas was still tolerated.  The sun-temples also contained huacas, or images, of the beasts which the Indians had venerated. {105b} In the great temple of Pachacamac, the most spiritual and abstract god of Peruvian faith, ’they worshipped a she-fox and an emerald.  The devil also appeared to them, and spoke in the form of a tiger, very fierce.’ {105c} This toleration of an older and cruder, in subordination to a purer, faith is a very common feature in religious evolution.  In Catholic countries, to this day, we may watch, in Holy Week, the Adonis feast described by Theocritus, {105d} and the procession and entombment of the old god of spring.

’The Incas had the good policy to collect all the tribal animal gods into their temples in and round Cuzco, in which the two leading gods were the Master of Life, and the Sun.’  Did a process of this sort ever occur in Greek religion, and were older animal gods ever collected into the temples of such deities as Apollo?

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While a great deal of scattered evidence about many animals consecrated to Greek gods points in this direction, it will be enough, for the present, to examine the case of the Sacred Mice.  Among races which are still in the totemistic stage, which still claim descent from animals and from other objects, a peculiar marriage law generally exists, or can be shown to have existed.  No man may marry a woman who is descended from the same ancestral animal, and who bears the same totem-name, and carries the same badge or family crest, as himself.  A man descended from the Crane, and whose family name is Crane, cannot marry a woman whose family name