A taboo depends for its force upon the belief that it is divinely ordained and that to break it means to bring down the anger of the gods upon the offender.  In the case, therefore, of a violation of taboo, the community forestalls the god’s wrath, which might otherwise extend to the whole number, by visiting the punishment directly upon the guilty offender, his family or tribe.  But it is always understood that back of the community disapproval is the unappeased challenge of the gods.  In the case of the Polynesian taboo, the god himself is represented in the person of the chief, whose divine right none dare challenge and who may enforce obedience within his taboo right, under the penalty of death.  The limits of this right are prescribed by grade.  Before some chiefs the bystander must prostrate himself, others are too sacred to be touched.  So, when a chief dedicates a part of his body to the deity, for an inferior it is taboo; any act of sacrilege will throw the chief into a fury of passion.  In the same way tabooed food or property of any kind is held sacred and can not be touched by the inferior.  To break a taboo is to challenge a contest of strength—­that is, to declare war.

As the basis of the taboo right lay in descent from the gods, lineage was of first importance in the social world.  Not that rank was independent of ability—­a chief must exhibit capacity who would claim possession of the divine inheritance;[4] he must keep up rigorously the fitting etiquette or be degraded in rank.  Yet even a successful warrior, to insure his family title, sought a wife from a superior rank.  For this reason women held a comparatively important position in the social framework, and this place is reflected in the folk tales.[5] Many Polynesian romances are, like the Laieikawai, centered about the heroine of the tale.  The mother, when she is of higher rank, or the maternal relatives, often protect the child.  The virginity of a girl of high rank is guarded, as in the Laieikawai, in order to insure a suitable union.[6] Rank, also, is authority for inbreeding, the highest possible honor being paid to the child of a brother and sister of the highest chief class.  Only a degree lower is the offspring of two generations, father and daughter, mother and son, uncle and niece, aunt and nephew being highly honorable alliances.[7]

Two things result as a consequence of the taboo right in the hands of a chief.  In the first place, the effort is constantly to keep before his following the exclusive position of the chief and to emphasize in every possible way his divine character as descended from a god.  Such is the meaning of the insignia of rank—­in Hawaii, the taboo staff which warns men of his neighborhood, the royal feather cloak, the high seat apart in the double canoe, the head of the feast, the special apparel of his followers, the size of his house and of his war canoe, the superior workmanship and decoration of all his equipment, since