TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 151 
The fruitfulness of Chinese civilization among all her neighbours should lead us 
to expect that its influence has reached much further, viz. among the islands of the 
Pacific and on the American continent. 
The third section treated of Polynesia. Hindoo ideas of religion and cosmogony 
penetrated beyond Java into some of the Polynesian islands. Chinese navigators 
used to make voyages to Ceylon and still more distant points in the Indian Ocean. 
A thousand years before Christ there was extensive commerce in the Indian Ocean 
carried on by the various inhabitants of western nations. 
The extension of the Malay and Polynesian languages from the Sandwich Islands 
to Madagascar should be looked at in the light of this fact. The military enter- 
prises, mercantile activity, and spread of the arts in the Indian and Pacific Oceans 
of that time are lost to history; but the sculptured remains in Haster Island, the 
striking indications of Semitic influence, and the existence anciently of a higher 
knowledge of navigation than now indicate degeneracy in the Polynesians. 
The knowledge of their own traditions is rapidly disappearing, as shown in the 
experience of missionaries resident in t'1¢ islands. The Rey. W. Gill, of Mangaia, by 
great effort obtained amounts of old cosmological and mythological beliefs, and he 
is now the sole depository of them, the old people that supplied them having died 
and left no disciples to transmit the knowledge of them. This is proof that the 
knowledge of these islanders tends to become more and more circumscribed as the 
ages roll on. 
The Polynesians all count, or could once count, to a hundred, and did so when 
their ancestors spoke a common language. This is proof of former high civilization ; 
for decimal notation, though consistent with savage life when isolation has caused 
degeneracy, always bespeaks civilization in the time of a nation’s early history. 
If the Polynesians, as these facts show, were formerly civilized, it was because 
of their connexion with Asia. That connexion is proved by identity of customs 
and beliefs with those of Asia ; for example, the practice of circumcision in Tonga 
with other Semitic customs, the belief in paradises and a pantheon, which remind 
the inquirer of India. Their language has words arranged in a Semitic order, 
agreeing also with the order of words in the Siamese and Annamite languages. 
The Polynesians avoid the mention of the proper name of persons held in honour. 
Their honorific phraseology is in this and other respects very like the Chinese. 
Among the Chinese linguistic peculiarities found in the languages of Polynesia 
may be mentioned the extensive use of numeratives between numbers and nouns, 
asin the Ponapean. This is not Aryan, nor Semitic, nor Ural Altaic ; but is both 
Chinese and Polynesian, and exists extensively in the Caroline Islands, Itisa 
fact of the greatest importance in the linguistic part of the argument. 
The logic may here be reversed. The connexion with Asia being proved, dege- 
neracy is proved too. Among the races of Asia the northern were in one respect 
inferior to the Polynesians, as shown by the want of identity in names of number. 
The fourth section was on America. The geometrically constructed mounds in 
North America prove deterioration. ; 
In America the facts are mixed ; in Polynesia they are of one kind. In America 
the facts point to North Asia and to South Asia; in Polynesia the facts point to 
Southern Asia only. 
In America the art of writing, belief in paradises and future punishment, the use 
of idols in temples, &c. indicate connexion with Southern Asia; so also traditions 
of the deluge and certain linguistic laws. 
The best hypothesis for the origin of the Mexican and Peruvian civilization is 
an immigration within the tropics and across the Pacific. The small islands of 
the Pacific represent much larger tracts which have at some unknown epoch 
become submerged. The ancient civilization of Polynesia points out the path by 
which the higher products of the intellect in the form of civilized ideas and customs 
could most conveniently find their way to America. 
The Mexican idea of the deluge is of South-Asiatic origin. The Mexican pictures, 
idols, and temples resemble those of Southern Asia rather than those of China. 
The doctrine of future punishments, as believed by North-American tribes, is 
more like the ideas of Southern Asia. 
The Northern Asiatic languages have strongly marked peculiarities, which are 
