94 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
conduct of man, and an advancement in the orga¬ 
nization of their civil polity, which, under corre¬ 
sponding circumstances, is but rarely attained, 
and could scarcely have been expected. 
Their government, in all its multiplied ramifi¬ 
cations, in its abstract theory, and in its practical 
details, was closely interwoven with their false 
system of religion. The god and the king were 
generally supposed to share the authority over 
mankind. The latter sometimes personated the 
former, and received the homage and the requests 
presented by the votaries of the imaginary divinity, 
and at other times officiated as the head of his 
people, in rendering their acknowledgments to 
the gods. The office of high-priest was frequently 
sustained by the king—who thus united in his 
person the highest civil and sacerdotal station in 
the land. The genealogy of the reigning family 
was usually traced back to the first ages of their 
traditionary history ; and the kings, in some of the 
islands, were supposed to have descended from the 
gods. Their persons were always sacred, and their 
families constituted the highest rank recognized 
among the people. 
The different grades in society were not so dis¬ 
tinctly marked in Polynesia, as among the inhabit¬ 
ants of India, where the institution of caste exists; 
nor were they so strongly defined in Tahiti as 
among the Sandwich Islanders, whose government 
was perhaps more despotic than that which pre¬ 
vailed in the southern islands. The lines of sepa¬ 
ration were, nevertheless, sufficiently distinct; the 
higher orders being remarkably tenacious of their 
dignity, and jealous of its deterioration by contact 
with inferiors. 
Society among them was divided into three dis- 
