Long ago I said, to one who would not listen, that "all the
religions of the world are based on false foundations, resting on
the Family, and fatally unsound." Here the Family, in our sense,
has not been developed. Here no rules trammel the best and
therefore the most evanescent of our affections. And as for
Religion, it is based upon Me, on Rondelet of Lothian. Here nobody
asks me why or how I am "superior." The artless natives at once
perceived the fact, recognised me as a god, and worship me (do not
shudder, my good Dean) with floral services. In Te-a-Iti (vain to
look for it on the map!) I have found my place--a place far from
the babel of your brutal politics, a place where I am addressed in
liquid accents of adoration.

You may ask whether I endeavour to raise the islanders to my own
level? It is the last thing that I would attempt. Culture they do
not need: their dainty hieratic precisions of ritual are a
sufficient culture in themselves. As I said once before, "it is an
absurdity to speak of married people being one." Here we are an
indefinite number; and no jealousy, no ambitious exclusiveness,
mars the happiness of all. This is the Higher Life about which we
used ignorantly to talk. Here the gross temporal necessities are
satisfied with a breadfruit, a roasted fish, and a few pandanus
flowers. The rest is all climate and the affections.

Conceive, my dear Dean, the undisturbed felicity of life without
newspapers! Empires may fall, perhaps have fallen, since I left
Fleet Street; Alan Dunlop may be a ditcher in good earnest on an
estate no longer his; but here we fleet the time carelessly, as in
the golden world. And you ask me to join a raucous political
association for an object you detest in your heart, merely because