The law with reason objects
to accepting a butcher as a juror on a trial for life; here is a whole
race of butchers.
The one mollifying element was agriculture. On the altar of Mixcoatl,
god of hunting, the Aztec priest tore the heart from the human victim
and smeared with the spouting blood the snake that coiled its lengths
around the idol; flowers and fruits, yellow ears of maize and clusters
of rich bananas decked the shrine of Centeotl, beneficent patroness of
agriculture, and bloodless offerings alone were her appropriate dues.
This shows how clear, even to the native mind, was the contrast between
these two modes of subsistence. By substituting a sedentary for a
wandering life, by supplying a fixed dependence for an uncertain
contingency, and by admonishing man that in preservation, not in
destruction, lies his most remunerative sphere of activity, we can
hardly estimate too highly the wide distribution of the zea mays. This
was their only cereal, and it was found in cultivation from the southern
extremity of Chili to the fiftieth parallel of north latitude, beyond
which limits the low temperature renders it an uncertain crop.
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