Even
Christians often speak of the dead with similar inconsistency. Tsui
Goab's worship is intelligible enough among a people so credulous that
they took Hahn himself for a conjurer (p. 81), and so given to ancestor-
worship that Hahn has seen them worship their own fathers' graves, and
expect help from men recently dead (pp. 112, 113). But, while the Khoi
Khoi think that Tsui Goab was once a real man, we need not share their
Euhemerism. More probably, like Unkulunkulu among the Zulus, Tsui Goab
is an ideal, imaginary ancestral sorcerer and god. No one man requires
many graves, and Tsui Goab has more than Osiris possessed in Egypt. {205}

If the Egyptians in some immeasurably distant past were once on the level
of Namas and Hottentots, they would worship Osiris at as many barrows as
Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab are adored. In later times the numerous
graves of one being would require explanation, and explanations would be
furnished by the myth that the body of Osiris was torn to pieces and each
fragment buried in a separate tomb.

Again, lame gods occur in Greek, Australian, and Brazilian creeds, and
the very coincidence of Tsui Goab's lameness makes us sceptical about his
claims to be a real dead man. On the other hand, when Hahn tells us that
epical myths are now sung in the dances in honour of warriors lately
slain (p. 103), and that similar dances and songs were performed in the
past to honour Tsui Goab, this looks more as if Tsui Goab had been an
actual person. Against this we must set (p. 105) the belief that Tsui
Goab made the first man and woman, and was the Prometheus of the
Hottentots.

* * * * *

So far Dr. Hahn has given us facts which entirely fit in with our theory
that an ancestor-worshipping people, believing in metamorphosis and
sorcery, adores a god who is supposed to be a deceased ancestral sorcerer
with the power of magic and metamorphosis. But now Dr. Hahn offers his
own explanation. According to the philological method, he will 'study
the names of the persons, until we arrive at the naked root and original
meanings of the words.' Starting then with Tsui Goab, whom all evidence
declares to be a dead lame conjurer and warrior, Dr. Hahn avers that
'Tsui Goab, originally Tsuni Goam, was the name by which the Red Men
called the Infinite.' As the Frenchman said of the derivation of jour
from _dies_, we may hint that the Infinite thus transformed into a lame
Hottentot 'bush-doctor' is diablem