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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: by these trappings of mystery, pleasure, and parade. This is the
more probable, and the secret, serious purpose of the institution
appears the more plainly, if it be true that, after a certain
period of life, the obligation of the votary was changed; at first,
bound to be profligate: afterwards, expected to be chaste.
Here, then, we have one side of the case. Man-eating among kindly
men, child-murder among child-lovers, industry in a race the most
idle, invention in a race the least progressive, this grim, pagan
salvation-army of the brotherhood of Oro, the report of early
voyagers, the widespread vestiges of former habitation, and the
universal tradition of the islands, all point to the same fact of
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