K AND AW. 181 



has furnished interesting evidence of tlie fact in a speech nt 



a missionary meeting in Hobart Town. After observing 



that any man wlio can distinguish himself by murdering his 



fellow-men (the missionary mode of describing ivar among 



savages, but among savages only) may be sure of deification, 



and that friends are sometimes deified and invoked, he says, 



' Tuikilakila, the chief of Somo-Somo, offered Mr. Hunt a 



preferment of this sort, " If you die first," said he, " I shall 



make you my god." In fact, there seems to be no certain 



line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor 



between gods and living men, for many of the priests and 



old chiefs are considered as sacred person:^, and not a few of 



them will also claim for themselves the right of divinity. 



" I am a god," Tuikilakila woidd sometimes say, and he 



believed it too. They were not merely the tvords of his lips ; 



he believed he was something above a mere man.'^ 



Nothing of course is inconceivable in this impression 



when in the common opinion of people the gods have like 



passions with themselves ; when they love and hate, are 



proud and revengeful, make war and kill and eat each 



other, and are in fact savages like themselves. Philo,^ as has 



been already observed, conceived analogous ideas in the Old 



Testament to be a false colouring to meet the requirements 



of barbarous and uninstructed men. The mischief has been 



that such conceptions, the fruit of extreme ignorance, and 



the rudest possible appreciation of supernatural power, which 



' Seemann, p. 247. 



' Extracts from the writings of this eminent Jew in reference to this 

 subject will be found in Appendix D. 



