Note XII-84 — Chapter XII · FUTURE STATE.

The reader who thinks upon the subject at all, cannot help being struck by the remarkable resemblance in some points between these future abodes of the Mexicans and those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The trembling soul has to pass over the same dreadful river, ferried by a brute Charon. In Hades as in Mictlan, the condition of the dead was a shadowy sort of apparent life, in which, mere ghosts of their former selves, they continued dreamily to perform the labors and carry on the occupations to which they had been accustomed on earth. In Greece as in Mexico, the shades of the dead were occasionally permitted to visit their friends on earth, summoned by a sacrifice and religious rites. Neither Elysium nor the glorious Sun House was the reward of the purely good so much as of the favorites of the gods. Such points of resemblance as these are, however, unnoticed by those who theorize concerning the origin of the Americans; they go farther for analogies, and perhaps fare worse.