They occur in all languages, and hint how
readily the worship of fire glided into that of the reproductive
principle, into extravagances of chastity and lewdness, into the
shocking orgies of the so-called phallic worship.
Some have supposed that a sexual dualism pervades all natural religions
and this too has been assumed as the solution of all their myths. It has
been said that the action of heat upon moisture, of the sun on the
waters, the mysteries of reproduction, and the satisfaction of the
sexual instincts, are the unvarying themes of primitive mythology. So
far as the red race is concerned, this is a most gratuitous assumption.
The facts that have been eagerly collated by Dulaure and others to
bolster such a detestable theory lend themselves fairly to no such
interpretation.
There existed, indeed, a worship of the passions. Apparently it was
grafted upon or rose out of that of fire by the analogy I have pointed
out. Thus the Mexican god of fire was supposed to govern the generative
proclivities,[146-1] and there is good reason to believe that the sacred
fire watched by unspotted virgins among the Mayas had decidedly such a
signification.
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