unsel, who ever hated his mighty sire.' Now even as the
children of the Maori Heaven and Earth were 'concealed between the
hollows of their parents' breasts,' so the Greek Heaven used to 'hide his
children from the light in the hollows of Earth.' Both Earth and her
children resented this, and, as in New Zealand, the children conspired
against Heaven, taking Earth, however, into their counsels. Thereupon
Earth produced iron, and bade her children avenge their wrongs. {49a} Now
fear fell on all of them, except Cronus, who, like Tutenganahau, was all
for action. Cronus determined to end the embraces of Heaven and Earth.
But, while the Maori myth conceives of Heaven and Earth as of two beings
which have never been separated before, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously
approach his wife from a distance. Then Cronus stretched out his hand,
armed with a sickle of iron, or steel, and mutilated Uranus. Thus were
Heaven and Earth practically divorced. But as in the Maori myth one of
the children of Heaven clave to his sire, so, in Greek, Oceanus remained
faithful to his father. {49b}

This is the first portion of the Myth of Cronus. Can it be denied that
the story is well illustrated and explained by the New Zealand parallel,
the myth of the cruelty of Tutenganahau? By means of this comparison,
the meaning of the myth is made clear enough. Just as the New Zealanders
had conceived of Heaven and Earth as at one time united, to the prejudice
of their children, so the ancestors of the Greeks had believed in an
ancient union of Heaven and Earth. Both by Greeks and Maoris, Heaven and
Earth were thought of as living persons, with human parts and passions.
Their union was prejudicial to their children, and so the children
violently separated 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 intel