“War for the Aztecs was thus not a description of a situation in which there were only two opposites but was the one and eternal order itself, supremely right and supremely acceptable because it carried no possibility of a negation.

A people with this belief will readily accept human sacrifice as the end for which all wars are waged. They can even be led, through deepening piety and the increase of superstitious terrors, to draw out the drama of human sacrifice until, in its acceleration, it could become self-sustaining.”