Occasionally, indeed, we cannot fail to notice the lack of adequate criticism of his sources of information, and that too often he has failed to refer on his own account to the ultimate sources. We can excuse him for accepting the authority of Mommsen, Grote, and Curtius, when he is compiling a statistical survey of the political disturbances of the ancient world; but when he came to study the great French Revolution, it was certainly unwise to accept Taine as an authority. He has no lack of sources of information regarding more recent history; above all, as regards the Paris Commune, the still enduring epidemic of assassinations and attempted assassinations of Kings and Presidents, as regards Russian nihilism, anarchism, and the revolts and revolutions in the Central and South American Republics—all these provide him with a veritable superfluity of material for the study of the etiology and psychical anthropology of revolutions and revolts. In the chapters based upon such information as this the treatment often assumes a merely anecdotal form, which will induce in many readers a critical frame of mind, although the majority will find this portion also of the book alike stimulating and interesting; and, indeed, we must not forget that a thorough study and elucidation of the peculiar individual factors of political disturbances is hardly possible in default of the description of an abundance of individual traits. Thus, we read that Most exhibits the following “stigmata of degeneration”: “repulsive ugliness, an asymmetrical and enormous upper jaw, the eyes of a toad, flaccid skin.” Or we are told of the misdeeds of the Communard, Allix, and are then informed that “he had invented a telegraph, based upon the reciprocal sympathy of twenty-four pairs of snails, each pair representing a single letter of the alphabet.” Lombroso begins his demonstration with a purely psychological study; he describes the origin and effect of an impulsive tendency, deeply rooted in human nature, to which he gives the name of “misoneism” (hatred of novelty).[20] In the wounding of this misoneism he sees the essence of political crime, in the glorious defeat of this sentiment, which opposes itself to the most necessary progress, to the very being of social evolution. Thus the political criminal appears on the one hand as a transgressor against the most legitimate, and organically the most deeply rooted, social tendency of human nature, and, on the other hand (and simultaneously), as the prime advocate of every advance in civilization.[21]