VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 343 



Does not the action of Saul, on a famous occasion, 

 involve exactly the same theological presuppo- 

 sitions ? 



Therefore Saul said unto Jahveh, the Elohim of Israel, Shew 

 the right. And Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot : but the 

 people escaped. And Saul said, Cast lots between me and 

 Jonathan my son. And Jonathan was taken. And Saul said 

 to Jonathan, Tell me what thou hast done. . . . And the people 

 rescued Jonathan so that he died not (1 Sam. xiv. 41-45). 



As the Israelites had great yearly feasts, so had 

 the Polynesians ; as the Israelites practised cir- 

 cumcision, so did many Polynesian people ; as the 

 Israelites had a complex and often arbitrary- 

 seeming multitude of distinctions between clean 

 and unclean things, and clean and unclean states 

 of men, to which they attached great importance > 

 so had the Polynesians their notions of ceremonial 

 purity and their tabu, an equally extensive and 

 strange system of prohibitions, violation of which 

 was visited by death. These doctrines of cleanness 

 and uncleanness no doubt may have taken their 

 rise in the real or fancied utility of the prescrip- 

 tions, but it is probable that the origin of many is 

 indicated in the curious habit of the Samoans to 

 make fetishes of living animals. It will be 

 recollected that these people had no "gods made 

 with hands," but they substituted animals for 

 them. 



At his birth 



every Samoan was supposed to be taken under the care of some 

 tutelary god or aitu [ = Atua] as it was called. The help of 



