136 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Malayo-Polynesian speech. Had Mr Lang not overlooked this 

 point, he would have seen that the New Guinea natives, the true 

 Papuans, may well be without any intelligible form of religion, 

 while the Melanesian Papuans, as he calls them, have the elements 

 of religion "like other people." Their Malayo-Polynesian speech 

 alone shows that they must for ages have been in close contact 

 with the Indonesians, from whom they have acquired something 

 more than " the elements of religion." 



Convincing proof of this is supplied by such works as Mr 



C. M. Woodford's A Naturalist among the Head- 



n T, he Hunters (1890), Dr H. B. Guppy's The Solomon 



Melanesian 



Spirit World. Islands and their Natives (1887), and especially the 

 Rev. Mr Codrington's The Melanesians (1891). 

 The last named shows that, although for lack of an adequate 

 native term the Melanesian Mission has had everywhere to use 

 the English word God, all the Melanesians have a religious system 

 developed enough to distinguish between spirits, i.e. " super- 

 natural beings that never were in a human body," and ghosts, 

 i.e. "men's spirits that have left the body 1 ." There is moreover 

 the universal belief in mana, a supernatural power or influence, 

 which, though impersonal, is always connected with some persons, 

 spirits or ghosts, who direct or control it. As far as I can under- 

 stand Mr Codrington's explanation, this mana is a kind of 

 spiritual force or virtue, somewhat analogous to the Augustinian 

 grace, transmitted from the higher powers to man either directly, 

 or through some material object a stone of peculiar shape, a 

 tuft of leaves or the like the possession of which secures luck 

 and success in this life, just as the material water of baptism 

 opens the way to happiness in the next. In any case such a 

 metaphysical conception reveals an immense advance on the 

 gross anthropomorphism of the New Guinea Papuans. 



A similar subtle line of thought is manifested in the ideas 

 associated with sacrifice, prayer, invocation, dreams, prophecy, 

 omens, death and burial rites. Lolomboetogitogi, abode of the 

 dead, shows curious analogies with the Hades of the ancients. 

 In Lepers' Island it is reached, like Avernus, by descent through 

 a volcanic vent near a lake, where ghosts assemble, and where the 



1 P. 121. 



