THE MAORI SPIRIT.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 306, 19 September 1908, Page 12

THE MAORI SPIRIT.

TMor .this' heading'the London "Timc3" reviews "John Rutherford, the White ?f ' "Maori Life in Aotea," two of ' n^ rS- c "T ll ' ;com b o 's lucent publications. «im- 6 M.st/,ot thesb; two'boots' (says the v Times ) is a reprint of part of a. volume on New Zealand, r which ■' appeared - about • eighty years; .ago. in. the . "Library, of. Entcrtaming 'Knowledge," consisting'-.of the memoirs of a sailor, > who lived some years among the' Maoris, eked out with tho cominentaries of >a; literary man. ; Tho -second is • l ' W aitirely;;new. 4nd Tory bulky work: a ,°tv or- "Chancles" of- ancient Maori life, compJed with i extraordinary diligence and learning,'giving'in the. form of a c narrative a 1 complete' conspcctus of tho manners, customs, and beliefs of tho Natives of Aotea, or the North 1 Island • how they lived, ate, fished, hunted, cooked, and planted in the old days, together with everything relating to birth, marriage, death, ..mythology,. cosmogony, and priestcraft; an invaluable mino crf referesnco for tho folkloreman, with copious indices and glossaria. A comparison of tho. two books afFords an interesting commentary on our point of view about the cokured / nations of tho ■ earth; and an illustration of how our opinion of a ; peoplo may be entirely changed by • ehinang the attention to now points in their character and bokaviour. Eighty years ago the Maoris were simply a rece of savages, superstitious, cruel, and tre*ohcrous; arrant thieves, and cannibals of the worst Kind. The', interest of adventures among them rested on a continual congratulation man had escaped to relate them. The epithets applied to tho Natives wore perfectly just; thoy wcro indeed■ bloodthirsty, did stoal and did eat hninan flesh. In contact with Scots and English they have adopted a new social code and abandoned the old inconvenient ways. There is no country in tho world where white men and brown men now stand so much on an equal footing as in New Zealand. But tho .interest of tho whito man is not fixed on the modern Maori; ho does not look on him with missionary triumph, and rejoica that this is what European civilisation has dono for one who stood so low before. It is indeed hnrd to feel sincerely enthusiastic over people unlike ourselves, merely because they conform to our own uninteresting, ways. No, it is on the ancient Maori life that the European centres his attention; on tho life they lived in the "pre-pakeba days," at that very time when . they seemed to our grandfathers to be nothing but bloodthirsty barbarians; and aboub this we now have many books published in which they appear, as a noble race, brave and wise, " a. lofty religion and a complicated civilisation. And this is as true as the old opinion of them. It all depends whether you look at it from their point of view or irons that of their enemies. If you judge a civilisation by its faults the world is a howling wilderness of savagery Who are wo to throw stones ? But judge tho ancient Maori civilisation by what positive standard you will, except that- of implements and machinery, and it must bo admitted to stand very high. .In mechanical civilisation the'whole of the Polynesian raoe is deficient; nowhero in the Pacifio have any of them developed any better digging implement than the "ko," or "o," which is nothing but a pointed stick. But the most mechanically-advanced nations are not necotsarily tho most intelligent. Von Luschan attributes tho great brain-pan capacity of the Polynesians simply to their being more intelligent than the other races of the globe, our own included. Orio can see their in- . telligenoa in the mythology—cemmon to all the Polynesian stock; but the Maoris of New Zealand seem to have raised it to a higher philosophical pitch than any other branch of tho race. 'Tha schoolmen and theologians of Europo never reached such fine-drawn lubtletiaa as theso stick-digging savages. Tho Maori cosmogony, fundamentally the samo as the Greek with its grumbling buried Titans and its severance of Ouranos and Ge by their rebellioui boh, far surpasses it on the metaphysical side. Before ever wo come to gods there is Space to be accounted for, springing from Night, and Night from the Void. JJut the Void itself is first subdivided into.

soven stages before Desire comes into it and it becomes tho Delightful Void, and so the fast-bound Void, or Void with latent form; the Night itself has six stages of evolution. How curt and bald after this comes Hesiod with his "First of all was Chaos." And yet Hesiod's cosmogony is poetry, and tho Maori cosmogony is only philosophy and rhetoric. And that,' indeed, seems to bo one of the essential characteristics of Maori myths, which will always prevent them from talcing that equal placo with Greek and Scandinavian myths as matter for poetry and art which Mr. Andersen hopes for them. It is a strange thing, but tho fact is thai; there is a certain cold eighteenth century intellectuality about all tho products of tho Maori mind, which must always prevent them from coming very near to our simplo barbarian hearts. The rhetoric which takes tho placo of real sentiment among the Maoris is infectious ; arid irreproachable in taste • and diction as Mr. Andersen's version of these things is, it must bo confessed that it is hardly readable. Ho has absorbed the Maori spirit only too well. The narrative has too little of the dramatic in it, too much of the descriptive; it is always enthusiastic and circumstantial; it enumerates and enlarges where it should bo leaping along to a conclusion. Mi*. Andersen,is, too Maori also in his language; one must always havo a' thumb in -the glossary. "A man who pur-sues-kotuku rather than kaka has no food in his whata and no wife in his whare." The kailyard school never equalled this. But then the book is published primarily for New Zealanders; to them it will come more easily; the intellectual' atmosphere will not be so oppressive. And readability is not a necessary virtue in what may be regarded on this side of the ocean rather as a book of reference. ,