the parents.  This conduct is regarded as impious, and as an awful example to be avoided, in Maori pahs.  In Naxos, on the other hand, Euthyphro deemed that the conduct of Cronus deserved imitation.  If ever the Maoris had reached a high civilisation, they would probably have been revolted, like Socrates, by the myth which survived from their period of savagery.  Mr. Tylor well says, {50a} ’Just as the adzes of polished jade, and the cloaks of tied flax-fibre, which these New Zealanders were using but yesterday, are older in their place in history than the bronze battle-axes and linen mummy-cloths of ancient Egypt, so the Maori poet’s shaping of nature into nature-myth belongs to a stage of intellectual history which was passing away in Greece five-and-twenty centuries ago.  The myth-maker’s fancy of Heaven and Earth as father and mother of all things naturally suggested the legend that they in old days abode together, but have since been torn asunder.’

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That this view of Heaven and Earth is natural to early minds, Mr. Tylor proves by the presence of the myth of the union and violent divorce of the pair in China. {50b} Puang-ku is the Chinese Cronus, or Tutenganahau.  In India, {50c} Dyaus and Prithivi, Heaven and Earth, were once united, and were severed by Indra, their own child.

This, then, is our interpretation of the exploit of Cronus.  It is an old surviving nature-myth of the severance of Heaven and Earth, a myth found in China, India, New Zealand, as well as in Greece.  Of course it is not pretended that Chinese and Maoris borrowed from Indians and Greeks, or came originally of the same stock.  Similar phenomena, presenting themselves to be explained by human minds in a similar stage of fancy and of ignorance, will account for the parallel myths.

The second part of the myth of Cronus was, like the first, a stumbling-block to the orthodox in Greece.  Of the second part we offer no explanation beyond the fact that the incidents in the myth are almost universally found among savages, and that, therefore, in Greece they are probably survivals from savagery.  The sequel of the myth appears to account for nothing, as the first part accounts for the severance of Heaven and Earth.  In the sequel a world-wide Marchen, or tale, seems to have been attached to Cronus, or attracted into the cycle of which he is centre, without any particular reason, beyond the law which makes detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name.  To look further is, perhaps, chercher raison ou il n’y en a pas.

The conclusion of the story of Cronus runs thus:—­He wedded his sister, Rhea, and begat children—­Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and, lastly, Zeus.  ’And mighty Cronus swallowed down each of them, each that came to their mother’s knees from her holy womb, with this intent, that none other of the proud children of Uranus should hold kingly sway among the Immortals.’  Cronus showed a ruling father’s usual jealousy