They are tolerant to a degree. The savage, void of any clear
conception of a supreme deity, sets up no claim that his is the only
true church. If he is conquered in battle, he imagines that it is owing
to the inferiority of his own gods to those of his victor, and he rarely
therefore requires any other reasons to make him a convert. Acting on
this principle, the Incas, when they overcame a strange province, sent
its most venerated idol for a time to the temple of the Sun at Cuzco,
thus proving its inferiority to their own divinity, but took no more
violent steps to propagate their creeds.[290-1] So in the city of Mexico
there was a temple appropriated to the idols of conquered nations in
which they were shut up, both to prove their weakness and prevent them
from doing mischief. A nation, like an individual, was not inclined to
patronize a deity who had manifested his incompetence by allowing his
charge to be gradually worn away by constant disaster. As far as can now
be seen, in matters intellectual, the religions of ancient Mexico and
Peru were far more liberal than that introduced by the Spanish
conquerors, which, claiming the monopoly of truth, sought to enforce its
claim by inquisitions and censorships.
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