ese cravings are has already been shown.

The reason for adopting four ages, thus making the present the fifth,
probably arose from the sacredness of that number in general; but
directly, because this was the number of secular days in the Mexican
week. A parallel is offered by the Hebrew narrative. In it six epochs or
days precede the seventh or present cycle, in which the creative power
rests. This latter corresponded to the Jewish Sabbath, the day of
repose; and in the Mexican calendar each fifth day was also a day of
repose, employed in marketing and pleasure.

Doubtless the theory of the Ages of the world was long in vogue among
the Aztecs before it received the definite form in which we now have it;
and as this was acquired long after the calendar was fixed, it is every
way probable that the latter was used as a guide to the former.
Echevarria, a good authority on such matters, says the number of the
Suns was agreed upon at a congress of astrologists, within the memory of
tradition.[217-1] Now in the calendar, these signs occur in the order,
earth, air, water, fire, corresponding to the days distinguished by the
symbols house, rabbit, reed, and flint. This sequence, commencing with
Tochtli (rabbit, air), is that given as that of the Suns in the Codex
Chimalpopoca, translated by Brasseur, though it seems a taint of
European teaching, when it is added that on the _seventh_ day of the
creation man was formed.[217-2]

Neither Jews nor Aztecs, nor indeed any American nation, appear to have
supposed, with some of the old philosophers, that the present was an
exact repetition of previous cycles,[218-1] but rather that each was an
improvement on the preceding, a step in endless progress. Nor did either
connect these beliefs with astronomical reveries of a great year,
defined by the return of the heavenly bodies to one relative position in
the heavens. The latter seems characteristic of the realism of Europe,
the former of the idealism of the Orient; both inconsistent with the
meagre astronomy and more scanty metaphysics of the red race.

The expectation of the end of the world is a natural complement to the
belief in periodical destructions of our globe. As at certain times past
the equipoise of nature was lost, and the elements breaking the chain of
laws that bound them ran riot over the universe, involving all life in
one mad havoc and desolation, so in the future we have to expect that
day of doom, when the ocean tid