[291-1] Scenes of brutal licentiousness were approved
and sustained throughout the continent as acts of worship; maidenhood
was in many parts freely offered up or claimed by the priests as a
right; in Central America twins were slain for religious motives; human
sacrifice was common throughout the tropics, and was not unusual in
higher latitudes; cannibalism was often enjoined; and in Peru, Florida,
and Central America it was not uncommon for parents to slay their own
children at the behest of a priest.[291-2] The philosophical moralist,
contemplating such spectacles, has thought to recognize in them one
consoling trait. All history, it has been said, shows man living under
an irritated God, and seeking to appease him by sacrifice of blood; the
essence of all religion, it has been added, lies in that of which
sacrifice is the symbol, namely, in the offering up of self, in the
rendering up of our will to the will of God.[291-3] But sacrifice, when
not a token of gratitude, cannot be thus explained.
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