Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

ON TRADITION. 315
of the Taliitians. and allowing it to be exact, although I
have a suspicion that a missionary would have put it
somewhat differently,30 it shows a comparative state of
religion very much elevated above anything we have yet
seen. They had besides curious customs, such as that
of eating apart. " They ate alone/' they said, " because
it was right, but why it was right they were unable
to explain"-a custom which is common to them
with the Bachapins (p. 384), (who, by the way, are
also among the races classified as " of no religion ").
Although the inhabitants of Tahiti present to us a much
higher standard of religion and morality than we have
yet met with, also " they, on the whole, may be taken
as representing the highest stage in civilisation to which
man has in any country raised himself, before the discovery
or introduction of metallic implements " (Lubbock,
p. 372).
30 Since writing the above, I have referred to Wallis and Bougainville.
Wallis could not discover "that these people had any kind of religious
worship among them.'*' Bougainville says "that their principal deity is
called * Ein-t-era/ i.e. ' king of light,' or * of the sun *; besides whom they
acknowledge a number of inferior divinities, some of whom produce evil
and others good; that the general name for these ministering spirits is
Eatona; and that the natives suppose two of these divinities attend each
affair of consequence in human life, determining its fate either advantageously
or otherwise. To one circumstance our author speaks in decisive
terms. He says, when the moon exhibits a certain aspect which bears the
name of ' Malama Tamai' (the moon is in a state of war), the natives offer
W
the evil genius lull thee asleep.*"
Captain King (" Journal of Transactions on returning to the Sandwich
Islands," &c., Pinkerton, xi. 737) says of the Sandwich Islanders, "The
religion of these people resembles in most of its principal features that of
ds m
their sacrifices, and their sacred songs, all of which they have in common
with each other, are convincing proofs that their religious notions are derived
from the same source"
M