Studied in this sense they are rich in teachings.
Would we estimate the intellectual and aesthetic culture of a people, would we generalize the laws of progress, would we appreciate the sublimity of Christianity, and read the seals of its authenticity: the natural conceptions of divinity reveal them.

No mythologies are so crude, therefore, none so barbarous, but deserve the attention of the philosophic mind, for they are never the empty fictions of an idle fancy, but rather the utterances, however inarticulate, of an immortal and ubiquitous intuition.
These considerations embolden me to approach with some confidence even the aboriginal religions of America, so often stigmatized as incoherent fetichisms, so barren, it has been said, in grand or beautiful creations.

The task bristles with difficulties.

Carelessness, prepossessions, and ignorance have disfigured them with false colors and foreign additions without number.

The first maxim, therefore, must be to sift and scrutinize authorities, and to reject whatever betrays the plastic hand of the European.