POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



285 



cendiary firemen; 18, the don't-care bonfire- 

 kindler; 19, the don't-care pyrotechnic ex- 

 ploder; 20, the don't-care manufacturer of 

 unsafe kerosene, etc. ; 21, the " pyroma- 

 niac." The last four can not be considered 

 legal incendiaries, " but they bring the tres- 

 pass so near the crime that, they can be ad- 

 mitted into the insurance catalogue of in- 

 cendiaries 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 sun- 

 light ever penetrates to the depth of a hun- 

 dred fathoms, which Gunther 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 usu- 

 ally 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 with- 

 stand 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 Assas- 

 sination. The history of the doctrine of po- 

 litical assassination or tyrannicide has been 

 elucidated by a writer in the " Edinburgh Re- 

 view." It prevailed among the ancients, as 

 is illustrated in the stories of Brutus and of 

 Harmodius and Aristogiton. Its great apolo- 

 gists have been the Jesuits, but it is much 

 older in its Christian form than the Jesuit 

 order. At the beginning of the fi fteenth cent- 

 ury, not to go further back, a Franciscan fri- 

 ar, Jean Petit, who was Professor of Theol- 

 ogy at Paris, undertook to justify the mur- 

 der 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 con- 

 demned 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 tilulo, 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 

 tihclo, because a usurper has no subjects. 

 Mariaua, in his famous work " De Rege et 

 Regis Institutione," published in 1599, de- 

 fined 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 hu- 

 man race, and might lawfully be slain by 

 their subjects. He argued that the sover- 

 eign 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. 



Evolntion and Disease. Dr. R. G. Ec- 



cles, 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 ob- 

 tained 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 believ- 

 ing that a large number of weaknesses and 

 disease tendencies of the human family are 

 part of this great system that makes us ap- 

 pear as if we had descended from quad- 

 rupeds? 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 bota- 

 nist, zoologist, and physiologist ? " In a 

 similar vein Dr. Wesley Mills regards the 

 various forms of disease as so many cases, 



