This enumeration of the problems is long, but I fear by no means exhaustive. I have not yet mentioned the question that may legitimately arise, and is the most perplexing of all--that which is asked concerning the vital power and influence of a certain religion, its strength of appeal, its real control of the people’s thoughts and acts. The question, as we know, is difficult enough when we apply it to modern societies; it may be quite hopeless when applied to an ancient State. It is only worth raising when the record is unusually ample and varied, and of long continuity; when we can believe that it enshrines the thoughts of the people, not merely of the priest or of the philosopher. We are more likely to believe this when the record is rich not only in literature, but in monuments. It may also be demanded that the history of religions should include a history of their decay, and, in his brilliant address at the recent Congress, Professor Petrie has formulated this demand as one that Egyptology might fulfil. Certainly it belongs to the scientific treatment of our subject to note the circumstances and operative causes that induced a certain people to abandon their ancestral beliefs and cults; but whether from the {7} careful study of each special case certain general laws will emerge by process of induction may be doubted. It will depend partly on the completeness of our records and our skill in their interpretation. I will conclude this sketch of an ideal programme, which I, as least, can never hope to make actual, with one last query--Is it the main object of this comparative study to answer the inquiry as to the reciprocal influences of adjacent religions, to distinguish between the alien and the native elements in any particular system--to estimate, for instance, what Greece owed to Babylon, to Egypt, to India? Certainly the problem is proper to our province, is attractive, and even hopeful, and I have ventured to approach it myself. But I should hesitate to allow that it is the main one, and that the value of our study is to be measured by our success in solving it; for, whatever answer we finally give to such questions, or if we abandon in despair the attempt to answer them precisely, it is none the less fruitful to compare the Babylonian, Indo-Iranian, Egyptian, and Hellenic systems of belief--for instance, to consider the Orphic eschatology in relation to the Buddhistic, even if we reject the theory that Buddhistic influences could have penetrated into early Orphism.