nces tempt it
forth. It is not alone in "sleep, dreams, hypnosis, trance, and ecstacy
that we see a temporary subsidence of the upper consciousness and the
upheaval of a subliminal stratum"; there are many other states and many
other causes for this strange psychical phenomenon.

[101] Newbold: _Appleton's Popular Science Monthly_, February,
1897, p. 516.

[102] Westermarck: _History of Human Marriage_, p. 352.

I have demonstrated in the preceding pages that the worship of the
generative principle was almost, if not wholly, universal; I have also
shown that the beliefs, rites, and ceremonies of this cult made a
lasting impression upon the minds of every people among whom it gained a
foothold. Take the case of the ancient Hebrews. Notwithstanding the fact
that they were tried in the furnace of Javeh's awful wrath time and
again; notwithstanding the fact that famine, pestilence, war, and
imprisonment destroyed them by thousands; and, notwithstanding the fact
that they were threatened with utter and absolute annihilation--all on
account of this cult--they would not wholly abandon it. The words of the
prophets become almost pathetic as we read, over and over again, that,
although the kings did that which was pleasing in the sight of the Lord,
"the high places and the groves were not destroyed." Take the case of
the Aztecs. Crushed beneath the iron heels of Spain's hardy buccaneers,
an utterly broken and conquered race, Cortez turned them over to the
ministering care of his zealous priests. The prison, agonizing torture,
and the awful stake succeeded, at last, in Christianizing them; they
became children of Holy Mother Church! And yet, hundreds of years after
this "glorious victory of the cross," Biart finds the humble offerings
of their descendants at the feet of Mictlanteuctli! The modern Christian
Indian, in the deep shadows of the night, steals forth to offer up in
secrecy a prayer at the feet of one of the phallic trinity! What matters
it to the modern Aztec that his petition is offered to the ruler of
Mictlan, the hell of his forefathers, instead of to the mighty
Ipalnemoani, the Life-Giver?[103] In his opinion, Mictlanteuctli
represents the entire Aztec theogony, for has not his white priest kept
the name of _this_ god green in his memory? All the other gods have been
forgotten; their personalities have been absorbed into that of the god
of hell, for he has had advertisers in the shape of Catholic pr