It will be gain enough if we can dimly discern something behind the veil that shrouds the origins of things, can reach to something that has the air of a reasoned scientific hypothesis, and still more if we can indicate the paths along which one day light may come. We may then begin at once with stating more clearly what are the necessary conditions for a successful solution of the problem. First, we must accomplish a thorough exploration of the religions of the Anatolian and Mesopotamian lands; secondly, we must explore the Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and estimate the strength of its influence on the later period; thirdly, we must be able to decide what beliefs and practices the Hellenes brought with them from the North; lastly, before we can hope for any precision in our results, we must be able to answer with some degree of accuracy a burning chronological question: What was the date of the arrival through the Balkans from the North of those Aryan-speaking tribes that by mingling with the Southerners formed the Hellenic people of history? For only then shall we be able to test the whole question, by considering the position of the Eastern powers at this momentous epoch. The third of these inquiries, concerning the aboriginal religious ideas of the earliest Aryan Hellenes, is perhaps the most troublesome of all. I may venture upon it at a later occasion, but it is far too difficult and extensive to combine it with the others in a short treatise. Nor can I do more than touch lightly on the Minoan-Mycenaean period; for I wish to devote the greater part of these lectures to the comparative survey of Greece, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, as this task has never yet been critically performed. Something like an attempt was made by {34} Tiele in his _Histoire des anciennes Religions_, but when that book was written much of the most important evidence had not yet come in.