€46 MORAL CHARACTERS. 



trating into the motives and reading the character of 

 those with whom they are engaged, so far as regards 

 the probable conduct of those persons with respect 

 to their own self-interest. In short, the Australians 

 seem to have quick imitative, but no original powers; 

 to have great cunning, but little real intellectual 

 capacity. 



MORAL CHARACTERISTICS. 



The Malay o- Polynesian race. — The only points 

 in which this race differs in morals from ourselves, 

 or our ancestors, are in their low estimate of female 

 chastity, and in their propensity to cannibalism. 

 Most of the nations of this race seem to have origi- 

 nally allowed to unmarried women the same license 

 that in the rest of the world is confined to young 

 unmarried men, a departure from the strict rule of 

 chastity being looked on as a venial error, rather 

 than an irreparable stain upon the character. As 

 to their proneness to cannibalism, it appears not only 

 in those places where it has been openly and avow- 

 edly practised in our own times, as in New Zealand, 

 and among the Battaks in Sumatra, but is shewn by 

 several small traits in the history of other nations 

 of the race, where the practice has long since been 

 repudiated with horror. In Sir S. Raffles's History 

 of Java, he mentions a rebel chief being slain in 

 the presence of the sovereign, and his nobles, to 

 shew their detestation of his crime, cutting out his 

 heart, and dividing among them and eating it. 



