none but the chief can command the labor for their execution.  In the second place, this very effort to aggrandize him above his fellows puts every material advantage in the hands of the chief.  The taboo means that he can command, at the community expense, the best of the food supply, the most splendid ornaments, equipment, and clothing.  He is further able, again at the community expense, to keep dependent upon himself, because fed at his table, a large following, all held in duty bound to carry out his will.  Even the land was, in Hawaii and other Polynesian communities, under the control of the chief, to be redistributed whenever a new chief came into power.  The taboo system thus became the means for economic distribution, for the control of the relation between the sexes, and for the preservation of the dignity of the chief class.  As such it constituted as powerful an instrument for the control of the labor and wealth of a community and the consequent enjoyment of personal ease and luxury as was ever put into the hands of an organized upper class.  It profoundly influenced class distinctions, encouraged exclusiveness and the separation of the upper ranks of society from the lower.[8]

To act as intermediary with his powerful line of ancestors and perform all the ceremonials befitting the rank to which he has attained, the chief employs a priesthood, whose orders and offices are also graded according to the rank into which the priest is born and the patronage he is able to secure for himself.[9] Even though the priest may be, when inspired by his god, for the time being treated like a god and given divine honors, as soon as the possession leaves him he returns to his old rank in the community.[10] Since chief and priest base their pretensions upon the same divine authority, each supports the other, often the one office including the other;[11] the sacerdotal influence is, therefore, while it acts as a check upon the chief, on the whole aristocratic.

The priest represented in Polynesian society what we may call the professional class in our own.  Besides conducting religious ceremonials, he consulted the gods on matters of administration and state policy, read the omens, understood medicine, guarded the genealogies and the ancient lore, often acted as panegyrist and debater for the chief.  All these powers were his in so far as he was directly inspired by the god who spoke through him as medium to the people.[12]

Footnotes to Section II, 6:  The story as a reflection of aristocratic social life

[Footnote 1:  J.A.  Macculloch (in Childhood of Fiction, p. 2) says, comparing the literary ability of primitive people:  “Those who possess the most elaborate and imaginative tales are the Red Indians and Polynesians.”]

[Footnote 2:  Moerenhout, II, 4, 265.]