452 Profesmr James George Frazer [Feb. 5, 



power of chiefs has hitherto rested upon the behef in their super- 

 natural power derived from the spirits or ghosts with which they had 

 intercourse. As this belief has failed, in the Banks' Islands for 

 example some time ago, the position of a chief has tended to become 

 obscure : and as this belief is now being generally undermined, a 

 new kind of chief must needs arise, unless a time of anarchy is to 

 begin.'' It is thus that in Melanesia, as perhaps in other parts of 

 the world, religious scepticism tends to undermine the foundations 

 of civil society. 



In Polynesia the state of things Avas similar. There, too, the 

 power of chiefs depended largely on a belief in their supernatural 

 powers, in their relation to ancestral spirits, and in the magical virtue 

 of taboo, which pervaded their person and interposed between them 

 and common folk an invisible but formidable barrier, to pass which 

 was death. In New^ Zealand the Maori chiefs were deemed to be 

 living afuas or gods. " Think not," said one of them to a missionary, 

 '' that I am a man, that my origin is of the earth. I come from the 

 heavens ; my ancestors are all there : they are gods, and I shall 

 return to them." So sacred was the person of a Maori chief that it 

 was not lawful to touch him, even to save his life, xi chief has been 

 seen at the point of suffocation and in great agony with a fish bone 

 sticking in his throat, and yet not one of his people, who were 

 lamenting around him, dared to touch or even approach him, for it 

 would have been as much as their own life was worth to do so. Not 

 only the person of a Maori chief, but everything that had come into 

 contact with it. was sacred and would kill, so at least the Maoris 

 thought, any sacrilegious person who dared to meddle with it. Cases 

 have been known of Maoris dying of sheer frjght on learning that 

 they had unwittingly eaten the remains of a chief's dinner or handled 

 something that belonged to him. For example, a chief's tinder-box 

 has proved fatal to several men ; for having found it and lighted 

 their pipes with it, they actually expired of terror on learning to 

 whom it belonged. Thus the divinity which hedged a Maori chief 

 was a devouring flame which shrivelled up and consumed whatever 

 it touched. No wonder that such men were implicitly obeyed. 



Throughout the rest of Polynesia the state of things was similar. 

 In Africa we meet with a superstition of the same sort. The Cazembes 

 of Angola regarded their king as so holy that no one could touch him 

 without being killed by the magical power which emanated from his 

 sacred person. SimilaT- beliefs are current in the Malay region, where 

 the theory of the king as the Divine Man is strongly held. Not only 

 is the king's person considered sacred, but the sanctity of his body is 

 believed to communicate itself to his regalia and to slay those who 

 break the royal taboos. Thus it is firmly believed that any one who 

 seriously offends the royal person will be struck dead by a quasi- 

 electric discharge of that Divine Power which the Malays suppose to 

 reside in the king's body. Further, the Malays firmly believe that 



