What was the true origin of Zeus and Apollo the Greeks knew as little as Virgil knew the first germs of Jupiter and Mars. Yet these are the questions which most concern the students of mythology and religion, It is difficult, if not im possible, to draw a sharp line between the religion and the mythology, whether of Greeks or of Ro mans, and we must often rest satisfied to know no more of their Gods than the legends and the cult peculiar • to each period in their growth.
2. Comparison and Etymology. The only means we possess of knowing more of their gods than the Greeks and Romans knew themselves is comparison and etymology. Much has been achieved in this research, but there remain many names which admit, as yet, of no comparison and defy all etymology. \Ve must rest satisfied with having established the fact that the first step in the evolution of the principal gods and heroes is to be found in their names, and that a considera ble proportion of their names admit of etymolog ical interpretation. This conviction, unwelcome as it was at first to classic scholars, and resisted as it is even now as a dangerous innovation by a few of them, has imparted a new character to all mythological and religious studies, and has clear ly established the fact that here, as elsewhere, the legends and the cult of the gods can be accepted as the detritus only of far more ancient religious and mythological thought. Though the later his tory of the cult of the gods, of worship, sacrifice, of public and private festivals, and more particu larly of the most ancient temples still preserved to us is full of interest for understanding the later development of religious faith and myth among the two classical nations, it would clearly be as hopeless to try to gain an insight into the orig inal character of the principal deities of Greece and Italy from what we know of their cult in historical times as to try to discover the true genius of Christianity from the magnificent pag eants in St. Peter's at Rome, or from the joyous celebrations of the days of popular saints in streets of Santa Lucia at Naples. This is not, meant to belittle in any way the value of the many learned treatises on the legends and cults of Greeks and Romans published by the classical scholars of former centuries, but only to bring out more clearly the fundamental difference be tween their ideas and what is now called The Sci ence of Religion. That science, concerned as it chiefly is with the origin, not only of Greek and Roman, but of all the religions and mythologies of the East which have become accessible to us in their sacred literatures. with the genesis of their gods and goddesses, with the etymology of their names, and with the beginnings and original in tentions of their sacrifices, and of the various forms of praise, prayer and thanksgiving which in some cases gradually developed into a regular ceremonial or cult, was simply impossible before the beginning of our own and the end of the last century, and may fairly be claimed as one of the greatest conquests of our time.
3. Requisites for Investigation. A compar ative study of the religions of the world required before all things a knowledge of the language in which each religion arose, and without which it would have been impossible. No one would be bold enough to write on the gods of ancient Greece and Rome without at least a smattering of Greek and Latin. How then could the religions of India and ancient Persia have been studied without a knowledge of Sanskrit and Zend, and how could a comparative study of the principal re ligions and mythologies of the world have been possible without a previous comparative study of the languages in which they have become known to us? Even with regard to the still existing re ligions. whether of civilized or uncivilized races, ,which have been described to us by missionaries and travelers, or even by some of their followers, we see at once the wide difference between the statements of mere casual observers unable to ask questions or to carry on discussions on any au thoritative documents, whether of a literary or moral character, and the really instructive ac counts which we owe to men like Dr. Hahn, Bishop Callaway, the Rev. W. W. Gill, or to Rain-Molum Roy, Nila Kandla Ghoreh, Bunyin Nanjio, and others. When, at the beginning of our century, the scholars of Europe began to devote themselves to a study of Sanskrit and Zend, of Egyptian and Babylonian, there soon followed a complete revo lution in the ordinary ideas about the religions of the ancient inhabitants of India, Persia (Me dia), Egypt and Babylon. The decipherment of Vedic Sanskrit, of Avestic Persian, of hiero glyphic Egyptian and cuneiform Babylonian re ceived its real value when it was seen how it could serve as a key to the literature and reli gion of ancient humanity. Before that time our ideas of the religion of Egypt and Babylon, of India and Persia, were chiefly derived from He rodotus and other Greek writers, but comparison of their accounts with such accounts of the Egyp tian pantheon, as we now possess in the works of Brugsch or Maspero, will best show the dif ference which a knowledge. however slight, of the ancient Egyptian language has produced in a true appreciation of the ancient religion of Egypt. The same remark applies to the religion of Babylon and Assyria, though here there re mains much, undoubtedly, to be done before we can reach the deepest roots of the religion of the land of the two rivers. As we know it at present from the works of Maspero or Sayce, it seems so full of what we should call secondary or even ter tiary ideas that we cannot but hope that a fuller knowledge of the Akkadian language and litera ture may in time disclose to us a far deeper stratum of thought and in it the real germs of Mesopotamian faith and worship.