idea of a god existing before creation;[6] a progressive order of
creation out of the limitless and chaotic from lower to higher forms,
actuated by desire, which is represented by the duality of sex
generation in a long line of ancestry through specific pairs of forms
from the inanimate world--rocks and earth, plants of land and sea
forms--to the animate--fish, insects, reptiles, and birds;[7] and the
special analysis of the soul of man into "breath," which constitutes
life; "feeling," located in the heart; "desire" in the intestines; and
"thought" out of which springs doubt--the whole constituting _akamai_ or
"knowledge." In Hawaii the creation story lays emphasis upon progressive
sex generation of natural forms.

Individual islands of a group are popularly described as rocks dropped
down out of heaven or fished up from below sea as resting places for the
gods;[8] or they are named as offspring of the divine ancestors of the
group.[9] The idea seems to be that they are a part of the divine
fabric, connected in kind with the original source of the race.



_Footnotes to Section II, 2: Polynesian Cosmogony_

[Footnote 1: In the Polynesian picture of the universe the wall of
heaven is conceived as shutting down about each group, so that boats
traveling from one group to another "break through" this barrier wall.
The _Kukulu o Kahiki_ in Hawaii seems to represent some such confine.
Emerson says (in Malo, 30): "Kukulu was a wall or vertical erection such
as was supposed to stand at the limits of the horizon and support the
dome of heaven." Points of the compass were named accordingly _Kukulu
hikina, Kukulu komohana, Kukulu hema, Kukulu akau_--east, west, south,