into trees.' It is one among many examples of the
savage sense of the intercommunity of all nature. 'Antiquity made its
division between man and the world in a very different sort than do the
moderns.' {15a} I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. R. i.
46-56. _Why_ savages adopt the major premise, 'Human life is on a level
with the life of all nature,' philosophers explain in various ways. Hume
regards it as an extension to the universe of early man's own
consciousness of life and personality. Dr. Tylor thinks that the opinion
rests upon 'a broad philosophy of nature.' {15b} M. Lefebure appeals to
psychical phenomena as I show later (see 'Fetishism'). At all events,
the existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact. I
established it {15c} before invoking it as an explanation of savage
belief in metamorphosis.

(3) 'The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of aetiological
plant-stories' (aetiological: assigning a cause for the plant, its
peculiarities, its name, &c.), 'which are meant to explain a no longer
intelligible name of a plant, &c.' I also say, 'these myths are nature-
myths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in nature--namely,
for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.' {16}

The reader has before him Mr. Max Muller's view. The white kernel of the
cocoanut was locally styled 'the brains of Tuna.' That name required
explanation. Hence the story about the fate of Tuna. Cocoanut was used
in Mangaia in the sense of 'head' (testa). So it is now in England.

See Bell's Life, passim, as 'The Chicken got home on the cocoanut.'

The Explanation

On the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called 'brains of Tuna'
because 'cocoanut'='head,' and a head has brains--and, well, somehow I
fail to see why brains of Tuna in particular! Or, there being a story to
the effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the
metamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains. But why was the
story told, and why of Tuna? Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat
eels; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian
shepherd, but an eel. Seriously, I fail to understand Mr. Max Muller's
explanation. Given the problem, to explain a no longer intelligible
plant-name--brains of Tuna--(applied not to a plant but to the kernel of
a nut), this name is explained by saying that the moon, Ina, loved an
eel, cut off his head at