Chapter XXIII: Front Matter (23)

It appears significant, in the light of the present investigation, that the birth of Christianity, as well as the revival of pagan systems of philosophy, embodying principles for the organization of religious brotherhoods and ideal democracies, should coincide with the spread of the great tidings that a star had been seen by the Magi, or “wise men of the East, who came _from the east_ to Jerusalem.” Occurring, as it did, after “the interregnum as regards pole-stars,” during which nomadic tribes and seafarers had vainly sought the fixed star which had guided their forefathers, the appearance of a brilliant pole-star must have seemed doubly significant and revived, among pagan philosophers, the ideal of an earthly kingdom ruled by Heaven. The advent, at this time, of the Messiah who, with his twelve disciples, announced that the kingdom of heaven was nigh and taught that God was to be worshipped in the Spirit only, must indeed have appeared particularly impressive and well-timed.

Faithfully clinging to the ideal of a regenerated religious democracy, the early Christian church maintained itself through centuries of persecution and is slowly advancing, amidst almost overwhelming and innumerable difficulties, towards its realization.

Returning to Mexico we find that its civilization at the time of the Conquest was precisely what might be expected if a small body of men of superior wisdom and experience, such as was possessed by a remnant of Græco-Egyptian philosophers, had embarked in ships manned by the descendants of Phœnician seafarers, and found refuge in the “land of the West,” amongst simple, docile people, existing in large numbers, who, treated “as little children and instructed with love and gentleness, willingly submitted themselves to the guidance of their teachers.” A single, short-lived generation of these would have amply sufficed for the establishment of the governmental system and calendar, the firm institution of a “celestial kingdom,” and the spread of knowledge of the technique of various arts and industries deemed most useful to the natives. On the other hand, the foreign element, whose aims were chiefly ideal, could have left little or no impression upon the evolution of the native race, its art and industry, which doubtlessly followed its original independent line of development.

It is remarkable how the echo of great events in Old World history seem to have reached the Western hemisphere. In the Old World the eleventh and twelfth centuries were marked by a revival of religious enthusiasm, by the Crusades, the persecution of infidels by the Christian world and by a general stirring amongst oriental people, the descendants of the ancient pole-star worshippers.

Historical records and traditions accord in stating that in about the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era, the civilizations of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America underwent a great period of warfare, pestilence and famine, leading to the disintegration of the great ancient centres, to numberless migrations, and to an assumption of dominion in Mexico by a fierce warrior-race who increased the number of human sacrifices. It seems significant that it is to this troublous period in the history of ancient America that the advent of the Incas in Peru is assigned by native tradition, which also records the existence of more ancient centres of civilization situated around the Titicaca lake. The foundation of the Inca empire is assigned to as late as about 1200 A.D. (see p. 148, note 1), and all who compare Plato’s scheme for the reëstablishment of the holy polity of the Magnetes, and the description of the Peruvian “Four in One” state, must admit that the latter constitutes the most perfect example known, of a community based on those numerical principles which were considered most perfect by Plato. At a first glance one might be tempted to conclude that the foreign civilizers of Peru, the Incas, were acquainted with Plato’s twelve-fold scheme and deliberately established or reëstablished a “divine polity” accordingly, naming it the “Four in One” and instituting the worship of a supreme divinity designated as “Earth, Air, Fire and Water in One,” in consonance with the cosmical theory said to have been first formulated by Empedocles about B.C. 444, and adopted by Plato. Reflection shows, however, that no such conclusion is justifiable until competent authorities have thoroughly investigated and satisfactorily established how far the ideas of Empedocles and Plato were original and how far they incorporated older philosophical ideas, such as were preserved by the Egyptian priesthood or had been disseminated by the Phœnicians.(158) Nevertheless it is an undeniable fact that the Inca colony constitutes a most valuable object-lesson of a “cosmical state” founded on precisely the numerical scheme and principles of organization advocated by Plato. Reflection shows, moreover, that such a polity could only have been established and maintained itself during centuries, in a land free from enemies and amongst docile people “apt for subjection.”

A significant result of a critical comparison of the celestial kingdoms of Peru and Mexico is the perception that, in the former, as in Egypt, a hereditary sovereignty was exercised by male and female sacerdotal rulers of a “divine line of descent.” On the other hand we find, in Mexico, a state of affairs in exact accordance with Montezuma’s account of the behavior of his predecessors towards the lord who had led them and presided over the foundation of the Mexican empire. During his absence they, his vassals, established democratical principles and when he returned, having intermarried with women of the country and founded new cities, they refused to recognize his authority and let him depart. From Montezuma himself we learn that, although they thus emancipated themselves from their former lord, they continued to regard themselves as dependent and owing allegiance to the mother-city whence they had come. Until the time of the Conquest, however, they were governed by rulers whom they elected, and who had risen in rank merely by virtue of their moral and intellectual distinction.

It is indeed deeply suggestive and impressive to realize that, in antiquity as in modern times, the American Continent seems to have been sought, as a place of refuge, by men whose ideals have been state institutions founded on democratic principles. The ancient polities of Mexico and Peru and, what is more, the archaic Pueblos of to-day, alike furnish examples of conditions, such as undoubtedly existed in Mediterranean countries in ancient times and inspired Greek statesmen and philosophers to plan ideal polities, and must have preceded the creation of the Jewish and early Christian spiritualized ideal of a New Jerusalem, pervaded throughout by the Divine Spirit. In conclusion, there are a few points which I recommend to the consideration of students. Different writers have, as Prescott summarizes, with certainty discerned in the highest American civilizations, a Semitic or an Egyptian or an Asiatic origin.

This remarkable combination of features, distinctively characteristic of the said civilizations, actually existed amongst the Phœnicians who, as Professor Sayce relates, were allied to the Semitic race, were affected by contact with their cousins the Arameans or Syrians, penetrated to the coast of India, derived their art from Babylonia, Egypt, and later from Assyria, and “knew how to combine together the elements it had received and to return them, modified and improved, to the countries from which they had been borrowed.” In the case of India and China it is an established and accepted truth that an active communication existed between these countries and Asia Minor, which was carried on by a race of seafarers and colonists. When it is realized that, through them, distant regions became known and accessible, and that at one time in the history of Greek philosophy, for instance, statesmen, philosophers and mathematicians alike rivalled each other in planning ideal states, based on the identical principle: the harmonizing of human life with Nature’s laws; it seems but rational to infer that, at different times, bands of enthusiasts, adopting one numerical scheme in preference to another, and led perhaps by its inventor or disciples, set out in search of distant countries where they could undisturbedly establish “celestial kingdoms” according to their ideal plan. To such an enterprise as this I venture to assign the establishment of the celestial kingdom of China, drawing attention to Biot’s statement, cited on p. 298, that year cycles (_i. e._ the sociological and chronological system since in use) were introduced there from India, after the Christian era. This being the case, contrary to the claims of a much greater antiquity by Chinese scholars, the present form of the “celestial kingdom” appears to date from the arrival in China, from Persia, of Semitic emigrants, during the first century of our era (see p. 303), and to have undergone a certain re-modelling in the first half of the sixth century, after the arrival of a band of Syrian Christians (p. 304).

Pointing out that these dates would make it appear as though the cyclical systems of India and Eastern Asia had been formulated under the direct or indirect influence of Greek philosophy, I observe that the date of their introduction and establishment assigns them to approximately the same period which produced the numerical scheme adopted by Constantine, Maya and Mexican calendrical and chronological scheme. At the period when Constantine established New Rome and instituted four divisions of the empire, each divided into thirteen yielding a total of fifty-two prefectures, there lived in Byzantium a philosopher and rhetorician (315-390 A.D.) whose name was Themistius and who filled the office of prefect of Constantinople. It is well known that the attempt thus to organize the empire proved fruitless and that the proclamation of Christianity as the religion of his empire by Theodosius I (379 A.D.) inaugurated a prolonged persecution of pagan religion and philosophy (see p. 530).

Is it inadmissible to consider at least the possibility that, disappointed and driven from their land, some of those who clung to the ancient ideal, and were acquainted with the perfected scheme of state organization instituted by Constantine during the lifetime of Themistius, carried it at a later period, to the “hidden land” of the West and established it there, where it was preserved intact until the time of the Spanish Conquest? Is it by accident only that one of the names of the capital of ancient Mexico, as preserved in the writings of Cortés and Bernal Diaz is Temistitan, literally “land of Temis,” the Nahuatl language not furnishing any meaning to the latter word? Can it be that, just as the word Teotl, resembling Theos, is found on Mexican soil, employed with the same meaning as in Greek, the name Temistitan means “the land of established law, order and justice” dedicated to the Greek Themis, just as New Rome was dedicated to Sofia=Wisdom? Or did some sort of connection exist between the name of the Mexican capital, the system on which it was established and the philosopher Themistius?

Is it by chance merely that the state calendar of Temistitan was based on 4×13=52 divisions, and that Themistius of Byzantium, a member of that school of philosophy which had evolved numberless plans and numerical schemes for ideal states, should have held one of the 4×13=52 prefectures during Constantine’s reign? In order to make the most rapid advance towards a solution of the great problem of the origin of American civilizations, I venture to suggest that Orientalists and Americanists should combine and freshly study it from opposite points of view. One side might be taken by those who incline to admit the possibility that a few Phœnician traders discovered the American continent in ancient times and that, subsequently, those to whom they imparted their discovery and their successors, the daring Greek navigators, conveyed thither, at intervals, bands of refugees or enthusiasts who braved danger and death, in the hope of reaching the blessed land where, free from persecution, they could found ideal democracies or divine polities.

Besides studying and adding to the numberless similarities which have been cited by so many different authorities and to which I have added a modest contribution, let them produce evidence showing the improbability that the identical forms of cult, religion, social organization, calendar cycles and numerical schemes should have been independently evolved two or more times by distinct races. On the other hand, let those who hold the view that American civilization was purely autochthonous, advance grounds for the supposition that it developed a school of philosophical speculation and that America produced its Empedocles and its Plato. Let them also formulate the psychical law which caused the American race to formulate the four elements, recognized as such by the philosophers of India and Greece, and not the five of Chinese philosophy; and to evolve numerical schemes applied to social organization, identical with those current in India, Western Asia and the Mediterranean countries, but different from that employed in China and Japan. It will also be incumbent upon them not only to disprove American traditions, which record the introduction of a higher civilization and plans of social organization by strangers, but also to demonstrate that, although in ancient times, Phœnician traders carried on an active traffic with Britain, daring the perils of the Bay of Biscay, they could not possibly have ventured across the southern Atlantic, even in the most favorable seasons. It has remained a source of sincere regret to me that circumstances prevented my attending the Orientalist Congress which met at Rome, in October, 1899, under the presidency of the illustrious Count Angelo de Gubernatis, to whom credit is due for having first suggested and planned that a section of the Congress should devote itself to the discussion of prehistoric contact or connection between the Old and New Worlds.

With an apology for my non-attendance and consequent failure to aid in organizing the section and carrying out a plan which met with my enthusiastic approval, I venture to submit the present investigation to the President and officers of the Orientalist Congress with the earnest hope that it may contain material and suggestions for fruitful discussions during the next Congress held, and that these may be carried on in a section devoted to the consideration of facts relating to prehistoric America and its relation to the Old World.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.

In the preceding pages the view is advanced that the ancient cross-symbol or swastika was first used by man, presumably in circumpolar regions, as a record of the opposite positions assumed, by circumpolar constellations, in performing their nocturnal and annual circuit around Polaris. Employed as a year sign in the first case, the cross or swastika later became the symbol of the Four Quarters, of quadruplicate division and of a stable central power whose rule extended in four directions and controlled the entire Heaven.

At some remote period of antiquity man developed the idea of social organization and, in India, ancient Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria, actual proofs exist that the earliest cities and states were divided into four quarters, a division involving the distribution of the population into four tribes under a central chief. Wherever this division was carried out, it represented an attempt to harmonize human society and the establishment of the ideal of a religious democracy, founded on principles of law, order, justice, peace and good will. The pyramid, a primitive form of which consisted of four stories, and cruciform sacred structures, may be regarded as monuments commemorating a cosmical and territorial organization into four parts. The more extended conception of seven directions in space, consisting of the Above and Below, or Heaven and Earth, the Four Quarters and the sacred Middle, the synopsis of all, was also evolved. In the confederations of India and Iran, and Arabia, in the seven-storied towers of Babylonia, and in the division of the Egyptians into seven classes, we find the earliest traces of a practical application of this numerical division.

The ancient historical records of Egypt and Greece reveal that, in the earliest polities, the population was divided into groups consisting of a fixed number of individuals, officially represented by chieftains, or officers of the state, and that, in consequence, a state formed a unit, constituted according to a mathematical scheme, which was also applied to the regulation of time. Each officer of the state held office for a fixed term, in a prescribed order of rotation. The year was divided into a fixed number of seasons, marked by the positions of a circumpolar constellation, and this therefore appeared to regulate not only the cycle of time but the governmental rotation of office and the entire activity of the community. Starting from a common basis of quadruplicate division in different countries, a great variety of constitutions of state was independently invented by statesmen and philosophers, who devised cycles produced by different combinations of numbers and signs, the object being to regulate time and communal life in imitation of the law, order and harmony existing in the motion of the stars and under the guidance of a supreme ruler, the earthly representative of Polaris.

The origin of these ideas and governmental scheme, in the Old World, is assigned by competent authorities to a northern race which had discovered the art of fire-making and evolved a religious cult and ritual suggested by it, in association with pole-star worship. Their civilization is supposed to have been developed by contact with a southern race, in Phrygia, and to have been carried at a remote period by their seafaring descendants to India, Asia Minor, Egypt and beyond the pillars of Hercules, to European countries, situated on the Atlantic.

The present investigation brings into prominence the fact that, just as the older Andean art closely resembles that of the early Mediterranean, an observation first made by Prof. F. W. Putnam,(159) so the fundamental principles, numerical scheme and plan of the state founded by the foreign Incas in Peru, resembled those formulated by Plato in his description of an ideal state.

It is a remarkable fact, on which the writer lays utmost stress, that, whereas there is a marked difference between the Chinese and the Mexican and Peruvian divisions of the elements and numerical cycles, the American systems exactly agree with those propounded by Greek philosophers and said to have reached them from more ancient centres of culture, presumably through the Phœnicians. On the other hand, there undoubtedly exist remarkable analogies between the Chinese and Hindu and Mexican sociological, chronological, cyclical systems, their principles being precisely the same. These close analogies as well as the marked divergences which have been noted can only be satisfactorily accounted for by the assumption that each of these countries derived their civilization from the same source. Over and over again different writers have pointed out undeniable analogies and resemblances between the highest forms of American civilization and that of China, India, Asia Minor, the Mediterranean and Western European countries. At the same time modern research has shown that the seafarers, whom we shall conveniently designate as the Phœnicians, acted as the intermediaries of ancient Old World civilization and formulated a culture which incorporated and formed a curious compound of elements drawn from different countries and people.

While investigation, moreover, reveals that the conquest of Phœnicia and intermittent periods of warfare and persecution directed against the religion and democratic principles of its people, must have furnished the most powerful incentive for them to extend their voyages of discovery and seek distant lands where colonies might be established. It is obvious that, if safe places of refuge were found, their existence would remain a secret and that, in course of time, a complete isolation of distant colonies would result.

Considering that it would be premature to formulate a final conclusion on a subject which demands so much more investigation, I merely observe here that, as far as I can see, the conditions which existed and survive amongst the aborigines of America would be fully accounted for by the assumption that they received certain elements of culture and civilization from Mediterranean seafarers who, at widely separated, critical periods of Old World history, may have transported refugees and would-be colonists or founders of ideal republics and “divine polities” to different parts of the hidden or divine land of “the West,” the existence of which was known by tradition to the Egyptian priesthood.

Under such circumstances it is apparent how the American Continent could have become an isolated area of preservation where archaic and primitive forms of civilization, religious cult, symbolism and industries, drawn at different epochs, from various, more or less important centres or from the outposts of Old World culture, would be handed down, transformed through the active and increasing influence of the native elements. The latter must always have been markedly predominant since it must be assumed, if at all, that the number of individuals who reached America, and the subsequent duration of their lives, must have been extremely limited. What is more, as Montezuma related that the colonists, from whom he descended, married native women, it is obvious that, from the outset, foreign and native influences were combined.

There was one main element, however, underlying both foreign and native civilizations, which formed the basis of both, united and made them as one, namely, the recognition of fixed immutable laws governing the universe, attained, by both races, by long-continued observation of Polaris and the “Northern” constellations.

To me the most precious result of the preceding investigation is the gradual recognition that the entire intellectual, moral and religious evolution of mankind has been the result of the fixed laws which govern the universe. From the time when our world began to revolve in space, at intervals, a luminous point of fixity in space has existed and an unknown force, irresistible as that which controls the magnetic needle and gyrostat,(160) appears to have raised the mind of man from ignorance and darkness and guided his footsteps towards a higher scale of existence and a more elevated conception of a supreme central power.

From this, amongst favored races, the higher conception of an invisible supreme deity seems to have been gradually developed by the human mind, as it rose in the scale of spiritual evolution. To many, the idea that it was the observation of the stars and the recognition of the fixity of Polaris which first led man to realize the existence of immutable laws, and of a supreme celestial power ruling the universe and to form the sacred sign of the cross, will appear as the fulfilment of the text in Genesis, which expressly mentions as the first, and therefore chief, purpose for which the lights in the firmament were created, that “they should be for _signs_ and portents, for seasons, for days and years ... and for lights.”

When we realize that all revolving spheres in space, and the beings that may live upon them, have been, are, or shall be subject to the same conditions as govern our tiny world, forcing their intellectual evolution to proceed in parallel lines to ours, we are compelled to recognize the existence of One Great Plan, and to render reverent homage to the Master-Architect of the Universe.