Note 31.1 — Chapter II · Statement of the Problem and the Evidence.

But even the early premature attempts to solve a problem may contribute something to the ultimate satisfying solution. And often in the middle of our investigations, when new evidence continues to pour in, there comes a moment when it is desirable to look around and take stock, so to speak, to consider whether we can draw some general conclusions with safety, or in what direction the facts appear at this stage to be pointing. In regard to the religions of anterior Asia and South-Eastern Europe, and the question of their relationships, this is now, I feel, a seasonable thing to do—all the more because the Asiatic region has been mainly explored by specialists, who have worked, as was profitable and right, each in his special province, without having the time or perhaps the training to achieve a comparative survey of the whole. We know also by long experience the peculiar dangers to which specialists are prone; in their enthusiastic devotion to their own domain, they are apt to believe that it supplies them with the master-key whereby to unlock many other secret places of human history. This hope, soon to prove an illusion, was regnant when the interpretation of the Sacred Vedic Books was first accomplished. And now certain scholars, who are distinguished specialists in Assyriology, are putting forward a similar claim for Babylon, and are championing the view that the Sumerian-Assyrian religion and culture played a dominating part in the evolution of the Mediterranean civilisation, and that therefore much of the religious beliefs and practices of the early Greeks and other European stocks must be traced back to Mesopotamia as their fountain-head.31.1 This will be encouraging to that distinguished writer on Greek religion, Dr. O. Gruppe, who almost a generation ago proclaimed in his Griechische Mythologie the dogma of the emanation of all religion from a single centre, and the dependence of Greece upon the near East.