e Aztec sages had at some time
propounded to themselves the question of how the sun, which seems to set
in the West, can rise the next morning in the East? Mungo Parke tells us
that when he asked the desert Arabs this conundrum, they replied that the
inquiry was frivolous and childish, as being wholly beyond the capacities
of the human mind. The Aztecs did not think so, and had framed a definite
theory which overcame the difficulty. It was that, in fact, the sun only
advances to the zenith, and then returns to the East, from whence it
started. What we seem to see as the sun between the zenith and the western
horizon is, in reality, not the orb itself, but only its _brightness_, one
of its accidents, not its substance, to use the terms of metaphysics.
Hence to the Aztec astronomer and sage, the house of the sun is always
toward the East.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ramirez de Fuen-leal, _Historia_, cap. xx, p. 102.]

We need not have recourse even to this explanation. The sun, indeed,
disappears in the West; but his journey must necessarily be to the East,
for it is from that point that he always comes forth each morning. The
Light-God must necessarily daily return to the place whence he started.

The symbols of the mirror and the mystic drink are perfectly familiar in
Aryan sun-myths. The best known of the stories referring to the former is
the transparent tale of Narcissus forced by Nemesis to fall in love with
his own image reflected in the waters, and to pine away through
unsatisfied longing; or, as Pausanias tells the story, having lost his
twin sister (the morning twilight), he wasted his life in noting the
likeness of his own features to those of his beloved who had passed away.
"The sun, as he looks down upon his own face reflected in a lake or sea,
sinks or dies at last, still gazing on it."[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir George A. Cox, _The Science of Mythology and Folk Lore_,
p. 96.]

Some later writers say that the drink which Quetzalcoatl quaffed was to
confer immortality. This is not stated in the earliest versions of the
myth. The beverage is health-giving and intoxicating, and excites the
desire to seek Tlapallan, but not more. It does not, as the Soma of the
Vedas, endow with unending life.

Nevertheless, there is another myth which countenances this view and
explains it. It was told in the province of Meztitlan, a mountainous
country to the northwest of the province of Vera Cruz. Its inhabitants
spoke the Nahuatl tong