380 POLYNESIAN UESEARCHES. 
consult is the Sacred Volume; and multitudes, 
there is reason to believe, give to its divine 
communications unreserved credence, and yield 
to its requirements the most cheerful and consci¬ 
entious obedience. 
The religion, of which some account has been 
given, although established among a people 
scarcely above the rudest barbarism—destitute of 
letters, hieroglyphics, and symbols, and by their 
isolated situation deprived of all intercourse with 
the rest of the world—is, as a system, singularly 
complete. 
The invention displayed in the fabrication and 
adjustment of its several parts, the varied and 
imposing imagery under which it was exhibited, 
and the mysterious and complicated machinery 
which sustained its operations, were remarkable; 
and, in the standard of virtue which it fixed, in 
the future destinies it unfolded, and in its adaptation 
to the untutored but ardent mind, the Polynesian 
mythology will not suffer by comparison with any 
systems which have prevailed among the most 
polished and celebrated nations of ancient or mo¬ 
dern times. 
In some respects, the mythology of Tahiti pre¬ 
sents features peculiarly its own : in others we 
trace a striking analogy to that of the nations of 
antiquity. In each, the light of truth occasionally 
gleams through a mass of darkness and error. 
The conviction that man is the subject of superna¬ 
tural dominion, is recognized in ail, and the multi¬ 
plied objects of divine homage, which distinguished 
the polytheism of the ancients, marked also that 
of the rude islanders. Nor was the fabulous reli¬ 
gion of the latter deficient in the mummeries of 
sorcery and witchcraft, the delusion of oracles, and 
