of pleasures, life itself decays. It is from this point of view
that we may instance, among other causes of depression, the decay
of war. We have been so long used in Europe to that dreary
business of war on the great scale, trailing epidemics and leaving
pestilential corpses in its train, that we have almost forgotten
its original, the most healthful, if not the most humane, of all
field sports--hedge-warfare. From this, as well as from the rest
of his amusements and interests, the islander, upon a hundred
islands, has been recently cut off. And to this, as well as to so
many others, the Samoan still makes good a special title.

Upon the whole, the problem seems to me to stand thus:- Where there
have been fewest changes, important or unimportant, salutary or
hurtful, there the race survives. Where there have been most,
important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there it perishes.
Each change, however small, augments the sum of new conditions to
which the race has to become inured. There may seem, a priori, no
comparison between the change from 'sour toddy' to bad gin, and
that from the island kilt to a pair of European trousers. Yet I am
far from persuaded that the one is any more hurtful than the other;
and the unaccustomed race will sometimes die of pin-pricks. We are
here face to face with one of the difficulties of the missionary.
In Polynesian islands he easily obtains pre-eminent authority; the
king becomes his mairedupalais; he can proscribe, he can command;
and the temptation is ever towards too much. Thus (by all
accounts) the Catholics in Mangareva, and thus (to my own
knowledge) the Protestants in Hawaii, have rendered life in a more
or less degree unliveable to their converts. And the mild,
uncomplaining creatures (like children in a prison) yawn and await
death. It is easy to blame the missionary. But it is his business