The Secularisation is an Evidence of Mixture of
Race

(7) In short, the art of legend-making had continued vital in Polynesia down to recent times. There was no sacrilege in evolving the old gods or in inventing new gods, none in altering and embellishing the stories handed down by ancestors or in making them brand new. In other words, the art of moulding the Polynesian Olympus had been long secularised; even though it remained largely in the hands of the priests, it had also become an art of pleasure for the long nights; though the incantations were handed down and taught amid the strictest mystery in the school of theology, the tales of the gods and demigods were told around the fire or the lamp by any who knew themby preference the old men.

(8) This revolution in the attitude towards sacred things could not well have come about except by mixture of peoples, or races, that had different pantheons and different traditions. Purity of a race, in other words complete isolation of its racial culture and ideas, is the only thing that will preserve its religion unchanged and unchangeable in every feature; and here we have unmistakable evidence of a widespread and vigorous commingling of races and peoples in the secularisation of the art of religious tradition and legend, even if we had not already had enough in the revolutionary changes of the Polynesian pantheon. Gods and their histories and functions are but pawns on the religious chess-board of Polynesia, to be moved hither and thither with illimitable caprice. Nothing but stratum on stratum of people and belief can explain this singular phenomenon. There was no tapu on the stories of the gods; all might listen to them; and the secular imagination might still work on them, unhampered by more than the page 221mere general mould of tradition. Once or twice we hear of heterodoxy, as when a high priest is condemned for teaching that Tiki made man, and precautions are taken by stopping the mouth and ears of his corpse against the heresy passing into others. But this is a rare exception, and we may take for granted that the art of divine legend-making and divine story-telling had lost the consecration it had originally had as long as each element of the ultimate amalgam of Polynesian population remained pure.