Professor Tiele now devotes fifteen pages to the story of Cronos, and to
my essay on that theme. He admits that I was right in regarding the myth
as 'extraordinarily old,' and that in Greece it must go back to a period
when Greeks had not passed the New Zealand level of civilisation. [Now,
the New Zealanders were cannibals!] But 'we are the victims of a great
illusion if we think that a mere comparison of a Maori and Greek myth
explains the myth.' I only profess to explain the savagery of the myth
by the fact (admitted) that it was composed by savages. The Maori story
'is a myth of the creation of light.' I, for my part, say, 'It is a myth
of the severance of heaven and earth.' {32a} And so it is! No Being
said, in Maori, 'Fiat lux!' Light is not here _created_. Heaven lay
flat on Earth, all was dark, somebody kicked Heaven up, the already
existing light came in. Here is no creation de la lumiere. I ask
Professor Tiele, 'Do you, sir, create light when you open your window-
shutters in the morning? No, you let light in!' The Maori tale is also
'un mythe primitif de l'aurore,' a primitive dawn myth. Dawn, again!
Here I lose Professor Tiele.
'Has the myth of Cronos the same sense?' Probably not, as the Maori
story, to my mind, has not got it either. But Professor Tiele says, 'The
myth of Cronos has precisely the opposite sense.' {32b} What is the myth
of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth). Ouranos 'hid his
children from the light in the _hollows_ of Earth' (Hesiod). So, too,
the New Zealand gods were hidden from light while Heaven (Rangi) lay flat
on Papa (Earth). The children 'were concealed between the _hollows_ of
their parent's breasts.' They did not like it, for they dwelt in
darkness. So Cronos took an iron sickle and mutilated Ouranos in such a
way, enfin, as to divorce him a thoro. 'Thus,' I say, 'were Heaven and
Earth practically divorced.' The Greek gods now came out of the hollows
where they had been, like the New Zealand gods, 'hidden from the light.'