“Scratch, but do not cry, said the cat to the dog, who was getting the worst of it.” The meaning of which is, Do not be such a coward as to call others to help you, thereby involving them in your squabbles.
“Eat but drink not,—drink but eat not.” Good advice at meals, well attended to by the Fijians.
“Rest is better than food.” The over-worked man declines to eat until he has rested.
“Our greatest earthly treasures—what are they? Food and sleep.” True cannibal philosophy for both worlds.
“The source of all chopping power is the stomach.” This is one of the greatest articles in the creed of all canoe-builders and cannibal carpenters in general. The carpenters have the credit of invariably talking about being well fed. This must be a well understood clause in every contract made with them. Often, when the employer happens to be present, the artisan may be heard talking quite philosophically with his comrades on the great question of the “origin of power,” and the answer is as given above. The more civilised artisan of other countries will probably feel little inclination to find fault with philosophy of this practical and commonsense character, although it comes from a dark-skinned and savage “brother-chip” in the South Seas. For who could work in a tropical sun, or out of it either, without food, and plenty of it? Not, certainly, the vegetarian “brown man” of Polynesia, who has not strength of spirit enough to force himself to any lengthened physical endurance.
The conversation, of which the foregoing is the substance, had aroused the drowsy company to a little more intellectual activity, and Shark, the priest, struck in with some remarks on a more abstruse subject—the question of the eternity or non-eternity of the universe. This is what he said thereanent:—
“The land is waiting for the water; both the land and the water are waiting for the sky; one cannot pass away without the other. Therefore, when one goes, all the others go with it.”
For savage philosophy this is not so bad. The next remark of the priest’s is not so good; but it will help to show how imagination in the cannibal brain employed itself on objects which it could not understand.
“When the sun is drowned (i.e. set), he goes down to the spirit-world to enlighten the lands and people there. So, when it is day there it is night here, and vice versa.”
The following theory, propounded by the same authority, will have to be revised or thrown away as false science—as false as that of the ancients which taught that the earth was firmly planted on the back of an elephant, &c.