In a Maori pah, when a little boy behaves rudely to his parents, he is
sometimes warned that he is 'as bad as cruel Tutenganahau.'  If he asks
who Tutenganahau was, he is told the following story:--

'In the beginning, the Heaven, Rangi, and the Earth, Papa, were the
father and mother of all things.  "In these days the Heaven lay upon the
Earth, and all was darkness.  They had never been separated."  Heaven and
Earth had children, who grew up and lived in this thick night, and they
were unhappy because they could not see.  Between the bodies of their
parents they were imprisoned, and there was no light.  The names of the
children were Tumatuenga, Tane Mahuta, Tutenganahau, and some others.  So
they all consulted as to what should be done with their parents, Rangi
and Papa.  "Shall we slay them, or shall we separate them?"  "Go to,"
said Tumatuenga, "let us slay them."  "No," cried Tane Mahuta, "let us
rather separate them.  Let one go upwards, and become a stranger to us;
let the other remain below, and be a parent to us."  Only Tawhiri Matea
(the wind) had pity on his own father and mother.  Then the fruit-gods,
and the war-god, and the sea-god (for all the children of Papa and Rangi
were gods) tried to rend their parents asunder.  Last rose the forest-
god, cruel Tutenganahau.  He severed the sinews which united Heaven and
Earth, Rangi and Papa.  Then he pushed hard with his head and feet.  Then
wailed Heaven and exclaimed Earth, "Wherefore this murder?  Why this
great sin?  Why destroy us?  Why separate us?"  But Tane pushed and
pushed: Rangi was driven far away into the air.  "_They became visible,
who had hitherto been concealed between the hollows of their parents'
breasts_."  Only the storm-god differed from his brethren: he arose and
followed his father, Rangi, and abode with him in the open spaces of the
sky.'

This is the Maori story of the severing of the wedded Heaven and Earth.
The cutting of them asunder was the work of Tutenganahau and his
brethren, and the conduct of Tutenganahau is still held up as an example
of filial impiety. {46a}  The story is preserved in sacred hymns of very
great antiquity, and many of the myths are common to the other peoples of
the Pacific. {46b}

Now let us turn from New Zealand to Athens, as she was in the days of
Pericles.  Socrates is sitting in the porch of the King Archon, when
Euthyphro comes up and enters into conversation with the philosopher.
After some talk, Euthyphro says, 'You will think me mad when I tell you
whom I am prosecuting and pursuing!'  'Why, has the fugitive wings?' asks
Socrates.  'Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life!'  'Who is
he?'  'My father.'  'Good heavens! you don't mean that.  What is he
accused of?'  'Murder, Socrates.'  Then Euthyphro explains the case,
which quaintly illustrates Greek civilisation.  Euthyphro's father had an
agricultural labourer at Naxos.  One day this man, in a drunken passion,
killed a slave.  Euthyphro's father seized the labourer, bound him, threw
him into a ditch, 'and then sent to Athens to ask a diviner what should
be done with him.'  Before the answer of the diviner arrived, the
labourer literally 'died in a ditch' of hunger and cold.  For this
offence, Euthyphro was prosecuting his own father.  Socrates shows that
he disapproves, and Euthyphro thus defends the piety of his own conduct:
'The impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished.  For do not
men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of gods?  Yet even they
admit that Zeus bound his own father Cronus, because he wickedly devoured
his sons; and that Cronus, too, had punished his own father, Uranus, for
a similar reason, in a nameless manner.  And yet when _I_ proceed against
_my_ father, people are angry with me.  This is their inconsistent way of
talking, when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.'

Here Socrates breaks in.  He 'cannot away with these stories about the
gods,' and so he has just been accused of impiety, the charge for which
he died.  Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated his
father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole affair: 'I can tell you
many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.' {48}

* * * * *

We have here a typical example of the way in which mythology puzzled the
early philosophers of Greece.  Socrates was anxious to be pious, and to
respect the most ancient traditions of the gods.  Yet at the very outset
of sacred history he was met by tales of gods who mutilated and bound
their own parents.  Not only were such tales hateful to him, but they
were of positively evil example to people like Euthyphro.  The problem
remained, how did the fathers of the Athenians ever come to tell such
myths?

* * * * *

Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the explanations which have
been given by scholars.  Near the beginning of things, according to
Hesiod (whose cosmogony was accepted in Greece), Earth gave birth to
Heaven.  Later, Heaven, Uranus, became the husband of Gaea, Earth.  Just
as Rangi and Papa, in New Zealand, had many children, so had Uranus and
Gaea.  As in New Zealand, some of these children were gods of the various
elements.  Among them were Oceanus, the deep, and Hyperion, the sun--as
among the children of Earth and Heaven, in New Zealand, were the Wind and
the Sea.  The youngest child of the Greek Heaven and Earth was 'Cronus of
crooked counsel, 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,