the Southern Hemisphere, while image-worship scarcely appears among the Andaman islanders, Tasmanians, or Australians, and is absent or rare in various Papuan and Polynesian districts, it prevails among the majority of the island tribes who have attained to middle and high savage levels. In Polynesian islands, where the meaning of the native idolatry has been carefully examined, it is found to rest on the most absolute theory of spirit-embodiment. Thus, New-Zealanders set up memorial idols of deceased persons near the burial-place, talking affectionately to them as if still alive, and casting garments to them when they passed by, also they preserve in their houses small carved wooden images, each dedicated to the spirit of an ancestor. It is distinctly held that such an atua or ancestral deity enters into the substance of an image in order to hold converse with the living. A priest can by repeating charms cause the spirit to enter into the idol, which he will even jerk by a string round its neck to arrest its attention; it is the same atua or spirit which will at times enter not the image but the priest himself, throw him into convulsions, and deliver oracles through him; while it is quite understood that the images themselves are not objects of worship, nor do they possess in themselves any virtue, but derive their sacredness from being the temporary abodes of spirits.[1] In the Society Islands, it was noticed in Captain Cook's exploration that the carved wooden images at burial-places were not considered mere memorials, but abodes into which the souls of the departed retired. In Mr. Ellis's account of the Polynesian idolatry, relating as it seems especially to this group, the sacred objects might be either mere stocks and stones, or carved wooden images, from six or eight feet long down to as many inches. Some of these were to represent 'tii,' divine manes or spirits of the dead, while others were to represent 'tu,' or deities of higher rank and power. At certain seasons, or in answer to the prayers of the priests, these spiritual beings entered into the idols,
- ↑ Shortland, 'Trads. of N. Z.' &c., p. 83; Taylor, pp. 171, 183, 212.
