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kind on the moil important occafionSj efpecially fuch as greatly in 

 iluence their happinefs. 



The Taheiteans relate, that the great god Tar6a-t'eay-e- 



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r 



TGOMoo, having by his wife 0-Te-j>apa, begotten many divi- 



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nities of both fexes, who created the various parts of this world,, 

 and who now prefide over them y having likewife produced the 



various ifles, by dni^^vn^ 0-Te-papa through the feas, he at lafl be 



got by her a fon called O-Tea, who was the firfl man : and ac- 

 cording to their tradition, his limbs were all rolled up in a figure. 



i 



like a ball, but his mother carefully expanded them to the fhape 

 in which men now appear. A daughter was likewife begotten by 

 the fame parents, whofe n,ame is 0-Te-T6rro, who became the 

 wife of 0-Tea,, and from this couple, they believe all mankind to 

 have been defcended. This traditional hiHory of the origin of 

 mankind, accounts atr once for many points of their religion and 

 philofophy : Jlrji, as they think man to have been born of their 

 great gods it is plain that they muft think their deities fimilar to. 

 mankind,, in their external appearance, and this is confirmed by the. 

 figure of Maoiiwe,, which Capt. Cook met with in his firft vcy- 



I 



Secondly J. \}!\o\x^ they always proteiled that God could not 

 - be feen, they had, , however, made a human figure to reprefent. 

 M^oww^, . which feems to intimate that this reprefentation of a. 

 god, was rather, reckoned to be a fymbolical figure, than a real. 



reprefentation : 



age 



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S5^ 



RELliSION. 



