supernatural intelligent beings" the Tongans include:--


1. The original gods. 2. The souls of nobles that have all
attributes in common with the first but inferior in degree.
3. The souls of matabooles<19> that are still inferior, and have
not the power as the two first have of coming back to Tonga to
inspire the priest, though they are supposed to have the power
of appearing to their relatives. 4. The original attendants or
servants, as it were, of the gods, who, although they had their
origin and have ever since existed in Bolotoo, are still
inferior to the third class. 5. The Atua pow or
mischievous gods. 6. Mooi, or the god that supports the
earth and does not belong to Bolotoo (vol. ii. pp. 103, 104).


From this it appears that the "Atuas" of the Polynesian are
exactly equivalent to the "Elohim" of the old Israelite.<20>
They comprise everything spiritual, from a ghost to a god, and
from "the merely tutelar gods to particular private families"
(vol, ii. p. 104), to Ta-li-y-Tooboo, who was the national god
of Tonga. The Tongans had no doubt that these Atuas daily and
hourly influenced their destinies and could, conversely, be
influenced by them. Hence their "piety," the incessant acts of
sacrificial worship which occupied their lives, and their belief
in omens and charms. Moreover, the Atuas were believed to visit
particular persons,--their own priests in the case of the higher
gods, but apparently anybody in that of the lower,--and to
inspire them by a process which was conceived to involve the
actual residence of the god, for the time being, in the person