night, but as the
malevolent ghost which is thought to kill people who die what we call a
'natural' death. Unburied men change into this sort of vampire, just as
Elpenor, in the Odyssey, threatens, if unburied, to become mischievous.
There is another Gaunab, the mantis insect, which is worshipped by
Hottentots and Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that the two Gaunabs are
differently pronounced. However that may be, a race which worships an
insect might well worship a dead medicine-man.

* * * * *

The conclusion, then, to be drawn from an examination of Hottentot
mythology is merely this, that the ideas of a people will be reflected in
their myths. A people which worships the dead, believes in sorcerers and
in prophets, and in metamorphosis, will have for its god (if he can be
called a god) a being who is looked on as a dead prophet and sorcerer. He
will be worshipped with such rites as dead men receive; he will be mixed
up in such battles as living men wage, and will be credited with the
skill which living sorcerers claim. All these things meet in the legend
of Tsui Goab, the so-called 'supreme being' of the Hottentots. His
connection with the dawn is not supported by convincing argument or
evidence. The relation of the dawn to the Infinite again rests on
nothing but a theory of Mr. Max Muller's. {209} His adversary, though
recognised as the night, is elsewhere admitted to have been, originally,
a common vampire. Finally, the Hottentots, a people not much removed
from savagery, have a mythology full of savage and even disgusting
elements. And this is just what we expect from Hottentots. The puzzle
is when we find myths as low as the story of the incest of Heitsi Eibib
among the Greeks. The reason for this coincidence is that, in Dr. Hahn's
words, 'the same objects and the same phenomena in nature will give rise
to the same ideas, whether social or mythical, among different races of
mankind,' especially when these races are in the same well-defined state
of savage fancy and savage credulity.

Dr. Hahn's book has been regarded as a kind of triumph over inquirers who
believe that ancestor-worship enters into myth, and that the purer
element in myth is the later. But where is the triumph? Even on Dr.
Hahn's own showing, ancestor-worship among the Hottentots has swamped the
adoration of the Infinite. It may be said that Dr. Hahn has at least
proved the adoration of the Infinite to be earlier than ancestor-wors