logy into cords through which the
race maintained vital connection with its mysterious past.
Interwoven with these, forming the woof, were threads of a
thousand hues and of many fabrics, representing the
imaginations of the poet, the speculations of the
philosopher, the aspirations of many a thirsty soul, as well
as the ravings and flame-colored pictures of the sensualist,
the mutterings and incantations of the _kahuna_, the
mysteries and paraphernalia of Polynesian mythology, the
annals of the nation's history--the material, in fact, which
in another nation and under different circumstances would
have gone to the making of its poetry, its drama, its opera,
its literature.

The people were superstitiously religious; one finds their
drama saturated with religious feeling, hedged about with
tabu, loaded down with prayer and sacrifice. They were
poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their
thoughts came to them as images; nature was to them an
allegory; all this found expression in their dramatic art.
They were musical; their drama must needs be cast in forms to
suit their ideas of rhythm, of melody, and of poetic harmony.
They were, moreover, the children of passion, sensuous,
worshipful of whatever lends itself to pleasure. How, then,
could the dramatic efforts of this primitive people, still in
the bonds of animalism, escape the note of passion? The songs
and other poetic pieces which have come down to us from the
remotest antiquity are generally inspired with a purer
sentiment and a loftier purpose than the modern; and it may
be said of them all that when they do step into the mud it is
not to tarry and wallow in it; it is rather with the
unconscious naivete of a child thinking no evil.

On the principle of "the terminal conversion of opposites,"
which the author once heard an old philosopher expound, the
most advanced modern is better able to hark back to the
sweetness and light and music of the primeval world than the
veriest wigwam-dweller that ever chipped an arrowhead. It is
not so much what the primitive man ca