Becerra, _Felicidad de Mejico_, 1685, quoted in Veitia,
_Historia del Origen de las Gentes que poblaron la America Septentrional_,
cap. XIX.]

[Footnote 2: In the Egyptian "Book of the Dead," Ra, the Sun-God, says, "I
am a soul and its twins," or, "My soul is becoming two twins." "This means
that the soul of the sun-god is one, but, now that it is born again, it
divides into two principal forms. Ra was worshipped at An, under his two
prominent manifestations, as Tum the primal god, or more definitely, god
of the sun at evening, and as Harmachis, god of the new sun, the sun at
dawn." Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, p. 80.]

The correctness of this supposition seems to be shown by a prevailing
superstition among the Aztecs about twins, and which strikingly
illustrates the uniformity of mythological conceptions throughout the
world. All readers are familiar with the twins Romulus and Remus in Roman
story, one of whom was fated to destroy their grandfather Amulius; with
Edipus and Telephos, whose father Laios, was warned that his death would
be by one of his children; with Theseus and Peirithoos, the former
destined to cause the suicide of his father Aigeus; and with many more
such myths. They can be traced, without room for doubt, back to simple
expressions of the fact that the morning and the evening of the one day
can only come when the previous day is past and gone; expressed
figuratively by the statement that any one day must destroy its
predecessor. This led to the stories of "the fatal children," which we
find so frequent in Aryan mythology.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir George W. Cox, _The Science of Comparative Mythology and
Folk Lore_, pp. 14, 83, 130, etc.]

The Aztecs were a coarse and bloody race, and carried out their
superstitions without remorse. Based, no doubt, on this mythical
expression of a natural occurrence, they had the belief that if twins were
allowed to live, one or the other of them would kill and eat his father or
mother; therefore, it was their custom when such were brought into the
world to destroy one of them.[1]

[Footnote 1: Geronimo de Mendieta, _Historia Eclesiastica Indiana_. Lib.
II, cap. XIX.]

We shall see that, as in Algonkin story Michabo strove to slay his father,
the West Wind, so Quetzalcoatl was in constant warfare with his father,
Tezcatlipoca-Camaxtli, the Spirit of Darkness. The effect of this
oft-repeated myth on the minds of the superstitious natives was to lead
t