Such is precisely the much discussed statement that Garcilasso de
la Vega says he often heard from the native Peruvians. He adds that so
careful were they lest any of the body should be lost that they
preserved even the parings of their nails and clippings of the
hair.[260-1] In contradiction to this the writer Acosta has been quoted,
who says that the Peruvians embalmed their dead because they "had no
knowledge that the bodies should rise with the soul."[260-2] But,
rightly understood, this is a confirmation of La Vega's account. Acosta
means that the Christian doctrine of the body rising from the dust being
unknown to the Peruvians (which is perfectly true), they preserved the
body just as it was, so that the soul when it returned to earth, as all
expected, might not be at a loss for a house of flesh.
The notions thus entertained by the red race on the resurrection are
peculiar to it, and stand apart from those of any other. They did not
look for the second life to be either better or worse than the present
one; they regarded it neither as a reward nor a punishment to be sent
back to the world of the living; nor is there satisfactory evidence that
it was ever distinctly connected with a moral or physical theory of the
destiny of the universe, or even with their prevalent expectation of
recurrent epochs in the course of nature.
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