is usually a simple
result of oblivion and the lapse of time. Once a man is dead, his
figure, which bulked so large and so clear to his contemporaries, begins
to fade and melt away into something vague and indistinct, until, if he
was a person of no importance, he is totally forgotten; or, if he was
one whose actions or thoughts deeply influenced his fellows for good or
evil, his memory lingers in after generations, growing ever dimmer and
it may be looming ever larger through the long vista of the ages, as the
evening mist appears to magnify the orb of the descending sun. Thus
naturally and insensibly, as time goes on, our mortal nature fades or
brightens into the immortal and divine.

As our subject is the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead,
we are not directly concerned with the original Tongan deities who were
believed never to have been men. But since their functions and worship
appear to have been in certain respects closely analogous to those of
the inferior deities, the souls of the dead, some notice of them may not
be out of place, if it helps to a fuller understanding of what we may
call the human gods. Besides, we must always bear in mind that some at
least of the so-called original gods may have been men, whose history
and humanity had been forgotten. We can hardly doubt that the celestial
hierarchy has often been recruited by the souls of the dead.

The original and superior gods, Mariner tells us, were thought to be
rather numerous, perhaps about three hundred all told; but the names of
very few of them were known, and even those few were familiar only to
some of the chiefs and their ministers, the _matabooles_; "for it may
easily be supposed," says Mariner, "that, where no written records are
kept, only those (gods) whose attributes particularly concern the
affairs of this world should be much talked of; as to the rest, they
are, for the most part, merely tutelar gods to particular private
families, and having nothing in their history at all interesting, are
scarcely known to anybody else."[54]

[54] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, ii. 104.

Among these original and superior deities was Tali-y-Toobo, the patron
god of the civil king and his family. He was the god of war and was
consequently always invoked in time of war by the king's family; in time
of peace prayers were sometimes offered to him for the general good of
the nation as well as for the particular interest and welfare of th