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MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HOTTENTOTS.
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The inference here drawn, therefore, harmonising with all preceding inferences, is that the initial step in the genesis of such a myth would be the existence of human beings named Storm and Sunshine, that from the confusion inevitably arising in tradition between them and the natural agents having the same names, would result this personalising of these natural agents, and the according to them human origins and human adventures : the legend, once having thus germinated, being, in successive generations, elaborated and moulded into fitness with the phenomena.
Let us now apply this sociological interpretation to the myth of Tsui-goab, and we can, hardly wrong Mr. Herbert Spencer in supposing that he would readily accept the tradition that there was once upon a time a Hottentot doctor who by some accident had injured his knee, and who after his death was worshipped as an ancestor, till he became the Supreme Being, and was invoked as such to send the thundercloud, to protect the flocks, and to let the fruits of the earth grow and abound. He might even go a step further, and compare the struggle of Tsui-goab and Gaunab, and the lame knee of one of the combatants, with similar legends elsewhere. Mr. Herbert Spencer, though he warns us that it is perilous to compare other religions with our own, does not shrink from such perils. Thus he writes (Principles of Sociology, p. 434) :
On reading that when the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, the natives, thinking them gods, offered up human beings to them, it is allowable to ask whether the ideas and motives of these people were analogous to those of the Scandinavian king On, when he immolated his son to Odin; but it is not allowable to ask whether like ideas and motives prompted Abraham's intention to sacrifice Isaac. The fact that Dr.
