To the ancient
Egyptians, also, they bore considerable resemblance in the same
particulars, as well as in those ideas of a future existence
which led them to attach so much importance to the permanent
preservation of the body.
But we shall look in vain in the history of the East for a
parallel to the absolute control exercised by the Incas over
their subjects. In the East, this was founded on physical power,
- on the external resources of the government. The authority of
the Inca might be compared with that of the Pope in the day of
his might, when Christendom trembled at the thunders of the
Vatican, and the successor of St. Peter set his foot on the necks
of princes. But the authority of the Pope was founded on
opinion. His temporal power was nothing. The empire of the
Incas rested on both. It was a theocracy more potent in its
operation than that of the Jews; for, though the sanction of the
law might be as great among the latter, the law was expounded by
a human lawgiver, the servant and representative of Divinity.
But the Inca was both the lawgiver and the law. He was not
merely the representative of Divinity, or, like the Pope, its
vicegerent, but he was Divinity itself. The violation of his
ordinance was sacrilege. Never was there a scheme of government
enforced by such terrible sanctions, or which bore so
oppressively on the subjects of it. For it reached not only to
the visible acts, but to the private conduct, the words, the very
thoughts, of its vassals.
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