of the most fruitful
sources of discord and crime in the community and thereby to foster
economic progress, which cannot exist without some measure of peace and
security for life and possessions. These were great gains, and so far as
the faith in immortality helped to win them for the Maoris, it certainly
ameliorated their condition and furthered the cause of civilisation
among them. But on the other hand the belief in the essential malignancy
of the spirits of the dead and in their great power to harm the living
added a host of purely imaginary terrors to the real evils with which
man's existence on earth is naturally and inevitably encompassed: it
imposed a regular system of needless and vexatious restrictions on
social intercourse and the simplest acts of daily life; and it erected
an almost insuperable barrier to the growth of science, and particularly
of that beneficent branch of science which has for its object the
alleviation of human suffering, since by concentrating the whole
attention of the people on a false and absurd theory of supernatural
agency it diverted them from that fruitful investigation of natural
causes which alone can strengthen and extend man's control over matter.
This was a heavy toll to pay for the advantages incidental to a belief
in immortality; and if we were asked to strike a balance between the
good and the evil which that belief entailed on the Maoris, we might
well hesitate to say to which side the scales of judgment should
incline.

CHAPTER II

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE TONGANS

Sec. 1. _The Tonga or Friendly Islands_

The Tonga or Friendly Islands form an archipelago of about a hundred
small islands situated in the South Pacific, between 18 deg. and 22 deg. South
latitude and between 173 deg. and 176 deg. East longitude. The archipelago falls
into three groups of islands, which lie roughly north and south of each
other. The southern is the Tonga group, the central is the Haabai or
Haapai group, and the northern is the Vavau group. In the southern group
the principal islands are Tongataboo and Eua; in the central group,
Namuka and Lifuka (Lefooga); in the northern group, Vavau. The largest
island of the archipelago, Tongataboo, is about twenty-two miles long by
eight miles wide; next to it in importance are Vavau and Eua, and there
are seven or eight other islands not less than five miles in length. The
rest are mere islets. Most of the islands are surrounded by