r husband to find her attendant
was a cavaliere servente. His Anglican morals were shocked. He had
thought himself the only male sinner by her complacence.

Before Christianity was forced on them, the Tahitians married in
the same rank, and with considerable right to choice. The tie might
be dissolved by the same authority binding it, the chief or head
of the clan. Inequality of rank, or near consanguinity, were the
only obstacles to marriage. Rank might be overcome, but never the
other. It was as in China, where Confucius himself laid down the law:
"A man in taking a wife does not choose one of the same surname as
himself." And in one of the Chinese commentaries the following reason
is given for this law: "When husband and wife are of the same surname,
their children do not do well and multiply." The prohibited degrees
were more distant than among us. It was a horror of incest that had
led to the general custom all over Polynesia of exchanging children
for adoption. Only this explanation could reconcile it with the
almost superstitious love the Polynesian father and mother have for
children. Their feeling surpasses the parental affection prevailing
in the remainder of the world, yet adoption is a stronger bond than
blood. No child was raised by its own genitors. The Tetuanuis had
brought up twenty-five, all freely given them at birth or after
weaning. The taboo was strict.

Illegitimate children were as welcome as others. The husband might
have been so jealous as to meditate killing his wife; but when her
child was born, although he knew it to be a bastard, he gave it the
same love and care as his own. There were exceptions, but one might
cite on the opposite side innumerable cases where, despite the most
open adultery, the husband has taken his wife's offspring for his
own. It was well that this was so, for adultery was so habitual that
were bastards not made welcome, there would have been much suffering
by children, innocent themselves. Here, as in civilization, men love
their bastards often more than their legitimate sons and daughters.

This prohibition against keeping one's own must have arisen when
there were very few inhabitants in Tahiti, for it is the outcome of a
natural guarding against sexual relationship in tribes or communities
where all are thrown together intimately, and stringent opposition
to such practices needed to prevent promiscuity. One must look, as
in the case of taboos, deeper than the surf