488 IDEALS OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 



However this may be, where there was no sin, they saw no 

 shame, and it must be confessed that in many points their idea 

 of sin was very different from ours. Before, however, we con- 

 demn them, let us remember that a dinner-party would have 

 seemed as wrong to them as many of their customs do to us. 

 If the freedom, both in language and in action, which they per- 

 mitted to themselves, seems to us in many respects objection- 

 able, we must not forget that our ideas of delicacy shut out 

 from general conversation numerous subjects of great interest 

 and importance, and throw round many matters of the utmost 

 importance an air of mystery which is not without serious 

 disadvantages. 



A considerable number of the principal people of both 

 sexes in Tahiti were formed into an association called the 

 "Arreoy," all the members of which were regarded as being 

 married to one another. If any of the women of the society 

 had a child, it was almost invariably killed : but if it was 

 allowed to live, the father and mother were regarded as having 



o o 



definitely engaged themselves to one another, and were ejected 

 from the association ; the woman being known from that time 

 as a "bearer of children," which was among this extraordinary 

 people a term of reproach. The existence of such a society 

 shows how fundamentally the idea of virtue may differ in 

 different countries. Yet the married women were faithful to 

 their husbands, and beautifully modest. It is impossible, 

 indeed, to acquit even them of the charge of infanticide, for 

 which we may find a cause, though not an excuse. I do not 

 allude to the curious custom, that a child, as soon as it was born, 

 inherited the titles, rank, and property of its father, so that a 

 man who was yesterday a chief might be thus at once reduced 

 to the condition of a private person ; nor to the fact that any 

 Arreoy who spared her infant was at once excluded from that 

 society. We cannot suppose that such customs were without 

 their effect; but a more powerful reason may perhaps be found 



