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These limitations we will concede to the pantomime's wide field of knowledge; but within them he must be familiar with every detail: the mutilation of Uranus, the origin of Aphrodite, the battle of Titans, the birth of Zeus, Rhea's deception, her substitution of a stone for her child, the binding of Cronus, the partition of the world between the three brothers.
List to me now, all of you, and give me a child apart from Zeus, yet nothing inferior to him in might, nay, stronger than he, as much as far-seeing Zeus is mightier than Cronus!" So spake she, and smote the ground with her firm hand. Then Earth, the nurse of life, was stirred, and Hera, beholding it, was glad at heart, for she deemed that her prayer would be accomplished.
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.
Nor do I find it easy to believe that myth-making man took all those distinctions, or held those views of the Creator. However, the chief thing to note is that Mr. Muller's etymology and Kuhn's etymology of Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their systems both depend on etymological analysis, is somewhat discomfiting. The next etymological theory is the daring speculation of Mr. Brown.
Furthest back in the series of images of gods came things like that large stone which was given to Cronus when he wished to swallow his infant child Zeus, and which he afterwards vomited up with his living progeny. This fetich-stone was preserved at Delphi.
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.
Myths originally diverse are blended, either unconsciously, as that of the Roman Saturn with the Greek Cronus; or consciously, as when the medieval missionaries transferred the deeds of the German gods to Christian saints. Lastly, the prevailing temperament of a nation, its psychology, gives a strong color to its mythical conceptions, and imprints upon them the national peculiarities.
Indeed, he was so teased by Ptolemy for not being able to answer it, that he got up and left the room. He afterwards wrote a book upon the subject; but the ridicule was said to have embittered the rest of his life. This was the person against whom Callimachus, some years later, wrote a bitter epigram, beginning "Cronus is a wise man."
Examples will be found chiefly in the essays styled 'The Myth of Cronus, 'A Far- travelled Tale, and 'Cupid and Psyche. Why, then, do distinguished scholars and mythologists reach such different goals? Clearly because their method is so precarious.
That this view of Heaven and Earth is natural to early minds, Mr. 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.
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