668 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
land-side. This system of orientation is especially significant as a link in the chain of conceptual evolution, and equally as an ex- planation of the persistence of quasi-binary systems throughout Polynesia and Australasia with their shorelands of antithetic poten- cies ; and no less significant are the facts in their bearing on the question of the habitat of primeval man, or of the orarian proto- type already inferred from other facts. 1 Although varying from tribe to tribe in its relation to the meridian, this nascent orienta- tion is no fleeting figment, but a deep-laid instinct so firmly rooted as to control every serious thought and direct every vital industry; indeed the Samoans and related navigators have de- veloped their orientation into one of the most marvelous instincts in the whole range of animal and human life, viz : a cognition of definite albeit invisible sailing paths, whereby they are able to traverse the open Pacific, far beyond sight of land, with a degree of safety nearly equal to that afforded by chart and compass.
The Polynesian orientation at once illumines the unformulated Cult of the Halves, and opens the way to an explanation of the Cult of the Quarters ; for each point of the shore is necessarily defined by sea in front and land in rear, and also by strands stretching toward the right* and toward the left. Moreover, assemblages of Polynesians and Australasians, like the Iroquoian tribal councils, find it convenient to arrange themselves in coor- dinate groups or " Sides," so placed laterally as to face a speaker at the end of the plaza or prytaneum ; and there is good reason for opining that the collective habit was soon strengthened, even if it was not initiated, by the slight asymmetry of the human body whereby the left brain receives blood a little more directly than the right and gives proportional excess of strength and cunning to the right hand. The initial inequality was doubtless too slight to yield more than barely perceptible physiologic advantage to the dextral fore-limb, as Brinton and Mason and others have shown ; yet it may well have sufficed to set in operation a chain
1 The Trend of Human Progress % Am. Anthrop. (N. S.), vol. I, 1899, p. 423.
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