by
half-castes, with foreign blood in their veins and inherited
capacities of feeling? Unless we know that, no scientific deduction is
allowable. These natives are very imitative. They learn our music
easily and rapidly, and with the art of writing and reading they
readily acquire our amorous phrases. A certain Biblical tone,
suggesting the Canticles, is noticeable. The word "heart" is used in a
way foreign to Polynesian thought, and apart from these details, is
there anything in these letters that goes beyond selfish longing and
craving for enjoyment? Is there anything in them that may not be
summed up in the language of appetite: "Thou art very desirable--I
desire thee--I grieve, and weep, and refuse to eat, because I cannot
possess thee now?" Such longing, so intense and fiery[191] that it
seems as if all the waters of the ocean could not quench it,
constitutes a phase of all amorous passion, from the lowest up to the
highest. Philosophers have, indeed, disputed as to which is the more
violent and irrepressible, animal passion or sentimental love.
Schopenhauer believed the latter, Lichtenberg the former.[192]

MAORIS OF NEW ZEALAND

Hawaii has brought us quite near the coast of America, whose red men
will form the subject of our next chapter. But, before passing on to
the Indians, we must once more return to the neighborhood of
Australia, to the island of New Zealand, which offers some points of
great interest to a student of love and a collector of love-stories.
We have seen that the islands of Torres Straits, north of Australia,
have natives and customs utterly unlike those of Australia. We shall
now see that south of Australia, too, there is an island (or rather
two islands), whose inhabitants are utterly un-Australian in manners
and customs, as well as in origin. The Maoris (that is, natives) of
New Zealand have traditions that their ancestors came from Hawaii
(Hawaiki), disputes about land having induced them to emigrate. They
may have done so by way of other islands, on some of their large
canoes, aided by the trade winds.[193] The Maoris are certainly
Polynesians, and they resemble Hawaiians and Tongans in many respects.
Their ferocity and cannibalism put them on a level with Fijians,
making them a terror to navigators, while in some other respects they
appear to have been somewhat superior to most of their Polynesian
cousins, the Tongans excepted. The Maoris and Tongans best bear out
Waitz-Gerland's asse