conceptions, and thus their followers advance beyond them, as
does the intelligence of the twentieth century look pityingly
upon the conception of the cruel and jealous God of the Old
Testament, whose praises are nevertheless still sung in every
Christian church. Thus in Tahiti the people were not cannibals,
but the gods still appeared in the forms of birds that fed upon
the bodies of the sacrificed. The eye of the victim was,
indeed, offered to the chief, who raised it to his lips but did
not eat it. In Samoa also where the practice of cannabalism was
very rare and indulged in only under great provocation, some of
the gods remained cannibals, and the surest way of appeasing
any god was to be laid upon the stones of a cold oven. In
Tahiti and Samoa, while most of the gods were malevolent, a few
were kindly disposed towards mortals; in Fiji, however, they
were all dreaded as the most powerful, sordid, cruel and
vicious cannibal ghosts that have ever been conjured into being
in the realm of thought.

All over the Pacific from New Zealand to Japan, and from New
Guinea to Hawaii, ancestor-worship forms the backbone of every
religion as clearly as it did in Greece or Rome. There are
everywhere one or more very ancient gods who may always have
existed and from whom all others are descended. Next in order
of reverence, although not always in power, come their
children, and finally the much more numerous grandchildren and
remote descendants of these oldest and highest gods. Finally,
after many generations, men of chieftain's rank were born to
the gods. Thus a common man could never attain the rank of a
high chief, for such were the descendants of the gods, while
commoners were created out of other clay and designed to be