nized
as effects. It teaches us that the idea of God neither arose from the
phenomenal world nor was sunk in it, as is the shallow theory of the
day, but is as Kant long ago defined it, a conviction of a highest and
first principle which binds all phenomena into one.

One point of these legends deserves closer attention for the influence
it exerted on the historical fortunes of the race. The dawn heroes were
conceived as of fair complexion, mighty in war, and though absent for a
season, destined to return and claim their ancient power. Here was one
of those unconscious prophecies, pointing to the advent of a white race
from the east, that wrote the doom of the red man in letters of fire.
Historians have marvelled at the instantaneous collapse of the empires
of Mexico, Peru, the Mayas, and the Natchez, before a handful of Spanish
filibusters. The fact was, wherever the whites appeared they were
connected with these ancient predictions of the spirit of the dawn
returning to claim his own. Obscure and ominous prophecies, "texts of
bodeful song," rose in the memory of the natives, and paralyzed their
arms.

"For a very long time," said Montezuma, at his first interview with
Cortes, "has it been handed down that we are not the original possessors
of this land, but came hither from a distant region under the guidance
of a ruler who afterwards left us and returned. We have ever believed
that some day his descendants would come and resume dominion over us.
Inasmuch as you are from that direction, which is toward the rising of
the sun, and serve so great a king as you describe, we believe that he
is also our natural lord, and are ready to submit ourselves to
him."[187-1]

The gloomy words of Nezahualcoyotl, a former prince of Tezcuco,
foretelling the arrival of white and bearded men from the east, who
would wrest the power from the hands of the rightful rulers and destroy
in a day the edifice of centuries, were ringing in his ears. But they
were not so gloomy to the minds of his down-trodden subjects, for that
day was to liberate them from the thralls of servitude. Therefore when
they first beheld the fair complexioned Spaniards, they rushed into the
water to embrace the prows of their vessels, and despatched messengers
throughout the land to proclaim the return of Quetzalcoatl.[188-1]

The noble Mexican was not alone in his presentiments. When Hernando de
Soto on landing in Peru first met the Inca Huascar, the latter relate