396 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



islands) the preparation of the stuff made of bast, 

 usual in all the islands ; and the same writer shows 

 us the Bisayas of his time, with pierced and en- 

 larged ear-laps, such as Forster found among the 

 natives of Easter Island ; a custom which the latter 

 have already abandoned in our times, and which 

 we still found prevalent in Radack and the Carolina 

 islands. 



It would probably be a vain attempt to trace 

 back to one principle, and to one source, the 

 sacred, diversely prohibitory laws and customs of 

 the taboo, which separate the sexes, raise insuper- 

 able barriers between the classes of the people, and, 

 differing in the different nations, are in all in the 

 same spirit, the basis of social order, and to under- 

 stand in their connection these human institutions, 

 or to deduce them from the religious and civil 

 system of other known nations. Here writing is 

 wanted ; and had we not the written docinnent at 

 hand, who would be able to discover, from the 

 similar prohibitions and usages of the Jews, the 

 mild spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which assigns 

 even to the beasts a well measured right, and in 

 which, besides, the idea of pure and impure, appears 

 to be unfounded ? * We are, besides, very far from 

 taking it for granted, that every civil or religious 



* We observe, by the way, without drawing any consequence 

 from it, that the word Taboo occurs in the books of Moses, in 

 the same sense as in the South Sea ishmds; a circumstance 

 which has not been overlooked by the learned. 



