the same sweeping away of a code and the
resultant evils and degradation in Japan. When Bushido imposed itself
on all above the herd, they had a sense of honor not surpassed
by the people of any nation; but commerce, the destruction of the
castes of samurai, heimin, and eta, the plunging of a military people
into business and competition with Western cunning, and the lacquer
of Christianity which had done little more than Occidentalize to a
considerable degree a few thousands, without giving them the practice
of the golden rule, or an appreciation of the Sermon on the Mount,
had robbed the Japanese of an ancient code of morality and honor,
and replaced it with nothing worth while--an insatiable ambition to
equal Occidental peoples and to conquer Oriental ones, and a thousand
factories which killed women and children.

"We were divided into three distinct castes," said Tetuanui. "The Arii,
or princes; Raatira, or small chiefs and simple landed proprietors;
and the Manahune, or proletariat. Alliances between Arii and Raatira
made an intermediate class--Eietoai. There was also a caste of
priests subject to the chief, their power all derived from him, but
yet tending to become hereditary by the priests instructing their
sons in the ceremonies and by taking care of the temple."

"That's the way the Aaron family got control of the Jewish priesthood,"
I interpolated. "They gave the people what they wanted, first a golden
calf god, and then an ark, and they had charge of both."

The chief frowned. He was a confirmed Bible reader, and the Old
Testament was so much like the Tahitian legends that he believed
every word of it.

"The Arii," he said, "were sacred and had miraculous strength and
powers. The food they touched was for others poison. There was a head
in each Arii family to whom the others were subject; he was often
an infant, and almost always a young man, for the eldest son of the
chief was chief and the father only regent. This custom continued
until comparatively recently in most families besides those of the
Arii. The Arii were the descendants of the last conquerors of these
islands. But their advent must have been ancient, for their power was
uncontested, and their rights were so many, their duties so few, and
the devotion of the people to them was so great, that only centuries
could have established them so firmly. Probably they came after the
Raatira. The Raatira were separated by too great a barrier to have