All Is Vanity !

rE modern Polynesian is no irrespon sible child of nature. He is an accurate observer, an appraiser of no mean ability and, withal, a philoso pher.

In his remote island he views the drama of the human merry-go-round from a position off-stage, whence he can see the wigs and grease-paint and tin sel of the actors, and the shoddy back ing of scenery which appears so sub stantial and alluring from beyond the foot-lights. Hence he has few illusions; and, however much his ancestors were inclined to transfigure the leaders and warriors of their migrations into demi gods, he, to-day, is no worshipper of idols.

Even when such super-men as Doctor Piltdawn (great anthropologist), Profes sor Ossian (renowned anatomist),. Pro fessor Grosbeak (famed ornithologist), and Curator Wangle (of the Minnefornia Museum), together with many equally eminent colleagues, came to the Islands, the Polynesian was not impressed.

On the contrary. After Piltdown had bruised his skull with strange measur ing instruments; Ossian, prowling in the fastnesses of the mountains, had discov ered and carried away the bones of his ancestors; Grosbeak, like a pestilence, had destroyed to extinction his island birds; and Wangle had plundered every tapu sanctuary of ancestral images and venerated heirlooms (for, apparently, no other purpose than to entomb them, together with spoil from many other lands, in a gloomy museum, there to be viewed with open-mouthed wonder by

nursemaids who, with their charges, rush in from the nearby city park to escape the downpour on very rainy days) even then the Polynesian has never been able to comprehend the reasons for the adula tion and obsequious obedience accorded them by their reputedly intelligent com patriots.

The less so, when he sees that the Science these men serve has, after all, been more of a curse than a blessing to the majority of mankind. Science has transformed the peaceful firmament into a hideous babel of parau (talk); has congested the highways of a once quiet countryside with storming monsters; has torn the minds of men from ancient anchorages into a sea of bewilderment and confusion more and more con founded; and, worst, has contrived instruments that empower the brigands of our age to fill the world with woe.

The Polynesian, contemplating all these things, finds expression for his thoughts in his Book of Wisdom: “E faufaa ore rahi teie; e mea faufaa ore rahi roa!

E mea fafaa ore anna’e a aita i toe”— which expresses eloquently in Tahitian the second verse of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes (“Vanity of vanities—all is

vanity”) .-

A.C.R.