454 Professor James George Frazer [Feb. 5, 



respect for private property, and has thereby contributed to the 

 security of its enjoyment. 



Nowhere perhaps does this appear more plainly than in Polynesia, 

 where the system of taboo reached its highest development ; for the 

 effect of tabooing a thing was, in the opinion of the natives, to endow 

 it with a supernatural or magical energy which rendered it practically 

 unapproachable by any but the owner. Thus taboo became a powerful 

 instrument for strengthening the ties — perhaps our socialist friends 

 might say riveting the chains — of private property. Indeed, some 

 good authorities have held that the system of taboo was originally 

 devised for no other purpose. Thus, an Irishman who lived as a 

 Maori with the Maoris, and knew them intimately, says that " the 

 original object of the tapu seems to have been the preservation of 

 private property. Of this nature in a great degree was the ordinaj:y 

 personal tapu. This form of tapu was permanent, and consisted in a 

 certain sacred character which attached to the person of a chief and 

 never left him. It was his birthright, a part of himself, of which he 

 could not be divested. . . The fighting men and petty chiefs, and 

 every one who could by any means claim the title of. . . gentleman, 

 were all in some degree possessed of this mysterious quality. It ex- 

 tended or was communicated to their clothes, weapons, ornaments, 

 and tools, and to everything in fact which they touched. This pre- 

 vented their chattels l)eing stolen or mislaid, or spoiled by children, 

 or used or handled in any way by others. And as in the old times 

 . . . every kind of property of this kind was precious inconsequence 

 of the great labour and time necessarily. . . expended in the manu- 

 facture, this form of tapu was of great real service. An infringement 

 of it subjected the offender to various dreadful imaginary punishments, 

 of which deadly sickness was one." Even when the offence had been 

 committed unwittingly the offender not uncommonly died of fright 

 on learning what he had done. So strong was the invisible barrier 

 which hedged the private property of chiefs and gentlemen among 

 the Maoris. 



In other parts of Polynesia the system of taboo was the same, and 

 everywhere it tightened, for good or evil, the ties of private property. 

 Thus in the Marquesas Islands the system converted the tabooed or 

 privileged classes into landed proprietors : the land belonged to them 

 alone and to their heirs : common folk lived by the labour of their 

 hands. Taboo was the bulwark of the landowners : it was that alone 

 which elevated them by a sort of divine right into a position of afflu- 

 ence and luxury above the vulgar : it was that alone which insured 

 their safety and protected them from the encroachments of their poor 

 and envious neighbours. " Without doubt," say the French writers 

 from whom I borrow these observations, "without doubt the first 

 mission of taboo was to establish property, the base of all society." 



In Melanesia also a system of taboo exists, and derives its sanction 

 from a superstition that the chief or other person who imposes a 



