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 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.'

* * * * *

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