312 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



denial in the requisite degree a habit which, we must 

 remember, is an essential factor in right conduct towards 

 others, as well as in the proper regulation of conduct for 

 self-benefit. 



Irrespective, then, of the particular traits of their cults, 

 Ecclesiastical Institutions have, in these ways, played an 

 important part in moulding human nature into fitness for 

 the social state. 



648. Among more special moral effects wrought by them, 

 may be named one which, like those just specified, has been 

 wrought incidentally rather than intentionally. I refer to 

 the respect for rights of property, curiously fostered by certain 

 forms of propitiation. Whether or not Mariner was right in 

 saying that the word taboo, as used in the Tonga Islands, 

 literally meant &quot;sacred or consecrated to a god,&quot; the fact is 

 that things tabooed, there and elsewhere, were at first things 

 thus consecrated : the result being that disregard of the taboo 

 became robbery of the god. Hence such facts as that 

 throughout Polynesia, &quot;the prohibitions and requisitions of 

 the tabu were strictly enforced, and every breach of them 

 punished with death &quot; (the delinquent being sacrificed to the 

 god whose tabu he had broken) ; and that in New Zealand 

 &quot; violators of the tapu were punished by the gods and also 

 by men. The former sent sickness and death ; the latter 

 inflicted death, loss of property, and expulsion from society. 

 It was a dread of the gods, more than of men, which upheld 

 the tapu.&quot; 



Obviously a sacredness thus given to anything bearing a 

 sign that it belongs to a god, may easily be simulated. 

 Though the mark on an animal or a fruit implies that an 

 offering to a god will eventually be made of it ; yet, since the 

 time of sacrifice is unspecified, there results the possibility of 

 indefinite postponement, and this gradually opens the door 

 to pretended dedication of things which never are sacrificed 

 things which nevertheless, bearing the sign of dedication. 



