Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/297

Rh firemen; 18, the don't-care bonfire-kindler; 19, the don't-care pyrotechnic exploder; 20, the don't-care manufacturer of unsafe kerosene, etc.; 21, the "pyromaniac." The last four can not be considered legal incendiaries, "but they bring the trespass so near the crime that, they can be admitted into the insurance catalogue of incendiaries as practically such."

The Condition of Deep-Sea Life.—It is suggested by Mr. A. R. Hunt, in "Nature," that the depth of the horizon above which deep-sea fish do not rise, is controlled rather by the matter of wave-motion than of the penetration of light. It is doubtful if sunlight ever penetrates to the depth of a hundred fathoms, which Günther has indicated as marking the beginning of deep-sea life; but that depth has been indicated by Mr. Hunt as the extreme depth to which wave-action reaches. This view is fortified by the fact that, though the deep-sea forms do not usually ascend above the hundred-fathom line, the shallow-water forms go far below it; and there is no reason why they should not do so; for, although a form unfitted to withstand wave-currents can not face them, there is nothing to prevent a flat fish, fully equipped as to this condition, from passing at will from the disturbed to the tranquil horizon, and returning.

The History of the Doctrine of Assassination.—The history of the doctrine of political assassination or tyrannicide has been elucidated by a writer in the "Edinburgh Review." It prevailed among the ancients, as is illustrated in the stories of Brutus and of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Its great apologists have been the Jesuits, but it is much older in its Christian form than the Jesuit order. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, not to go further back, a Franciscan friar, Jean Petit, who was Professor of Theology at Paris, undertook to justify the murder of the Duke of Orleans, on the plea that "it is lawful, by natural and divine law, for every subject to kill or cause to be killed a traitorous and disloyal tyrant." His teaching was denounced by Gerson and condemned by the Council of Constance. The decree of the council was, however, rejected by one author because it was not sanctioned by the Pope; while others sought to evade its force by making a distinction between a tyrant in titulo, or a usurper, and a tyrant in regimine, who is a lawful sovereign but has abused his trust. The decree could not, these writers alleged, apply to the tyrant in titulo, because a usurper has no subjects. Mariana, in his famous work "De Rege et Regis Institutione," published in 1599, defined as tyrants all sovereigns, legitimate or not, who forfeit their rights by governing for their own selfish interests, not for the good of their people; and held that such unjust rulers became the enemies of the human race, and might lawfully be slain by their subjects. He argued that the sovereign power is always dependent on popular consent, and that a tyrant is worse than a ferocious wild beast. When there existed a public assembly in the country, it should meet and pronounce sentence first, but, where no such resource was available, any person who had the courage might lawfully make himself the interpreter of the popular will. But the use of poison was forbidden by the common sense of mankind. The doctrine is, however, a most mischievous one, which is easily made to work both ways.

Evolution and Disease.—Dr. R. G. Eccles, in a paper on "Heredity and Disease," advises the application of the principles of evolution to pathological studies. "A vague, uncritical sort of belief in the transmission of disease tendencies," he says, "has obtained among general practitioners for a long time. Few have dared to allow themselves to speculate upon the possibility of this chain of tendencies stretching back into the world of animated nature below us. No one has a due conception of the vast magnitude of the possibilities involved in so daring a speculation. Is there any reason for believing that a large number of weaknesses and disease tendencies of the human family are part of this great system that makes us appear as if we had descended from quadrupeds? What harm can it do for us to work on this assumption for a while, and see whether or not it will prove as fruitful to the pathologist as it has been to the botanist, zoölogist, and physiologist?" In a similar vein Dr. Wesley Mills regards the various forms of disease as so many cases,