descendants of the ancient
pole-star worshippers.

Historical records and traditions accord in stating that in about the
eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era, the civilizations of Mexico,
Yucatan and Central America underwent a great period of warfare,
pestilence and famine, leading to the disintegration of the great ancient
centres, to numberless migrations, and to an assumption of dominion in
Mexico by a fierce warrior-race who increased the number of human
sacrifices. It seems significant that it is to this troublous period in
the history of ancient America that the advent of the Incas in Peru is
assigned by native tradition, which also records the existence of more
ancient centres of civilization situated around the Titicaca lake. The
foundation of the Inca empire is assigned to as late as about 1200 A.D.
(see p. 148, note 1), and all who compare Plato's scheme for the
reestablishment of the holy polity of the Magnetes, and the description of
the Peruvian "Four in One" state, must admit that the latter constitutes
the most perfect example known, of a community based on those numerical
principles which were considered most perfect by Plato. At a first glance
one might be tempted to conclude that the foreign civilizers of Peru, the
Incas, were acquainted with Plato's twelve-fold scheme and deliberately
established or reestablished a "divine polity" accordingly, naming it the
"Four in One" and instituting the worship of a supreme divinity designated
as "Earth, Air, Fire and Water in One," in consonance with the cosmical
theory said to have been first formulated by Empedocles about B.C. 444,
and adopted by Plato. Reflection shows, however, that no such conclusion
is justifiable until competent authorities have thoroughly investigated
and satisfactorily established how far the ideas of Empedocles and Plato
were original and how far they incorporated older philosophical ideas,
such as were preserved by the Egyptian priesthood or had been disseminated
by the Phoenicians.(158) Nevertheless it is an undeniable fact that the
Inca colony constitutes a most valuable object-lesson of a "cosmical
state" founded on precisely the numerical scheme and principles of
organization advocated by Plato. Reflection shows, moreover, that such a
polity could only have been established and maintained itself during
centuries, in a land free from enemies and amongst docile people "apt for
subjection."

A significant result of a critical