, she
called him _Eothe_, which signifies _finished_. That being prompted by
the universal instinct to propagate his kind, and being able to find no
female but his mother, he begot upon her a daughter, and upon the
daughter other daughters for several generations, before there was a
son; a son, however, being at length born, he, by the assistance of his
sisters, peopled the world.

Besides their daughter Tettowmatatayo, the first progenitors of nature
had a son whom they called _Tane_. Taroataihetoomoo, the Supreme Deity,
they emphatically style the causer of earthquakes; but their prayers are
more generally addressed to Tane, whom they suppose to take a greater
part in the affairs of mankind.

Their subordinate deities or Eatuas, which are numerous, are of both
sexes: The male are worshipped by the men, and the female by the women;
and each have morais to which the other sex is not admitted, though they
have also morais common to both. Men perform the office of priest to
both sexes, but each sex has its priests, for those who officiate for
one sex do not officiate for the other.[31]

[Footnote 31: In several respects the theological notions of these
islanders resemble those of the oriental philosophers, spoken of in
Mosheim's Historical Account of the Church in the First Century, to
which the curious reader is referred. The Otaheitan Eatuas and the
Gnostic [Greek] seem near a-kin; the generation scheme is common to
both. What said the philosophers? The Supreme Being, after passing many
ages in silence and inaction, did at length beget of himself, two beings
of very excellent nature like his own; these, by some similar operation,
produced others, who having the same desires and ability, soon generated
more, till the [Greek], or whole space inhabited by them, was
completely occupied. A sort of inferior beings proceeded from these, and
were considered by the worshippers as intermediate betwixt themselves
and the upper gods. But enough of this trash. Let certain infatuated
admirers of ancient philosophy blush, if they are capable of such an
indication of modesty, to find that the rude and tin-lettered
inhabitants of an island in the South-Sea, are not a whit behind their
venerated sages in the manufacture of gods and godlings. Alas, poor
Gibbon! must the popular religion of Otaheite, the licentious, the
dissolute, the child-murdering, the _unnatural_ Otaheite, be put on a
level with the elegant mythology of Homer, and t