80 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
and according to their own national conceptions, and to the circumstances 
in which they were placed by nature,—without a written language, or the 
use of metals, or beasts of burden, or any knowledge of, or communication 
with, the great world of mankind lying around them,—aye, more ;—without 
teaching or instruction or communication of ideas (even among them- 
selves !) ;—without the healthy incitement arising from competition with 
artists of other tribes, and of exhibition, and of praise from afar !—without 
even a probable certainty of his even completing what he had painfully 
devised and begun (all such being utterly precluded by their constant 
wars !); and without the slightest excitement of pay or reward, as things 
were never made for sale among them; and also with having a share (in 
common with the other members of his tribe) in the almost daily labours 
attendant on the cultivating and obtaining his food,—from which exertion 
no New Zealander in health, whatever might be his rank or intelligence, 
was ever exempt ;—all these things being fairly weighed and considered,— 
this, this is the way in which they should be judged by us—" 
** They are of the works of the Father, 
And of the one Mind the Intelligible. 
For Intellect is not without the Intelligible, 
And the Intelligible does not subsist apart from Intellect."— Zoroast. 
The Maori of to-day is not worthy, in this respect, to carry the shoes of 
his forefathers. And he knows it; he feels it. Ichabod! or Fuit Ilium, 
may well be called upon them. 
I, who have been, I may be allowed to say, long conversant with them, 
have no hesitation in stating, that the more I have seen and known of the 
works of the Ancient New Zealander, the more have I been struck with the 
many indications of their superior mind,—of their fine perception of the 
beautiful, the regular, and symmetrical; of their desire and labour after the 
beautiful; of their prompt and genuine, open and fearless criticisms,—in a 
word, of their great Ideality. And this high faculty of theirs which they 
possessed in an eminent degree, wil probably be better known and under- 
stood hereafter than itis at present. It was their possession of that faculty, 
even in more modern times, which enabled them at a glance, and, as if by 
inspiration,” to detect inaccuracy or want of ssthetic conformity and exact 
precision in the skilled performances of their European visitors, and as 
quickly to declare it ;—as in the martial exercises of the military (regulars), 
in the want of exact time in the rowing of boats by the most skilful seamen 
of H.M. navy ;—and, in all their own works, to perceive instantaneously 
all such want of symmetry if present. 
* I use this word here in the Socratic sense, as by him in Plato, Ton, 
