12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [boll. 38 



art, to the refreshment of men's minds. Its view of life was idyllic, 

 and it gave itself to the celebration of those mythical times when 

 gods and goddesses moved on the earth as men and women and when 

 men and women were as gods. As to subject-matter, its warp was 

 spun largely from the bowels of the old-time mythology into cords 

 through which the race maintained vital connection with its mys- 

 terious past. Interwoven with these, forming the woof, were threads 

 of a thousand hues and of many fabrics, representing the imagina- 

 tions of the poet, the speculations of the philosopher, the aspirations 

 of many a thirsty soul, as well as the ravings and flame-colored 

 pictures of the sensualist, the mutterings and incantations of the 

 kahuna^ the mysteries and paraphernalia of Polynesian mythology, 

 the annals of the nation's history — the material, in fact, which in 

 another nation and under different circumstances would have gone 

 to the making of its poetry, its drama, its opera, its literature. 



The people were superstitiously religious; one finds their drama 

 saturated with religious feeling, hedged about with tabu, loaded 

 down with prayer and sacrifice. They were poetical; nature was 

 full of voices for their ears; their thoughts came to them as im- 

 ages; nature was to them an allegory; all this found expression in 

 their dramatic art. They were musical ; their drama must needs be 

 cast in forms to suit their ideas of rhythm, of melody, and of poetic 

 harmony. They were, moreover, the children of passion, sensuous, 

 worshipful of Avhatever lends itself to pleasure. How, then, could 

 the dramatic efforts of this primitive people^ still in the bonds of 

 animalism, escape the note of passion? The songs and other poetic 

 pieces which have come down to us from the remotest antiquity are 

 generally inspired with a purer sentiment and a loftier purpose than 

 the modern; and it may be said of them all that when they do step 

 into the mud it is not to tarry and wallow in it ; it is rather with the 

 unconscious naivete of a child thinking no evil. 



On the principle of " the terminal conversion of opposites," which 

 the author once heard an old philosopher expound, the most ad- 

 vanced modern is better able to hark back to the sweetness and 

 light and music of the primeval world than the veriest wigwam- 

 dweller that ever chipped an arrowhead. It is not so much what the 

 primitive man can give us as what we can find in him that is worth 

 our while. The light that a Goethe, a Thoreau, or a Kipling can pro- 

 ject into Arcadia is mirrored in his own nature. 



If one mistakes not tKe temper and mind of this generation, we 

 are living in an age that is not content to let perish one seed of 

 thought or one single phase of life that can be rescued from the 

 drift of time. We mourn the extinction of the buffalo of the plains 

 and of the birds of the islands, rightly thinking that life is somewhat 



