MAIMING, mutilation, a physical injury which involves the loss of, or incapacity to use, a bodily member. The verb "to maim," in M. E. _maynhe_, _mahayme_, _mayme_, &c. was adopted from O. Fr. _mahaignier_: cf. It. _magagnars_, Med. Lat. _mahemiare_, _mahennare_, &c. (see Du Cange, _Gloss._, _s.v._ "Mahamium"). Maiming or mutilation is and has been practised by many races with various ethnical and religious significances, and was a customary form of punishment on the principle of an "eye for an eye" (see MUTILATION). In law "maiming" is a criminal offence; the old law term for a special case of maiming of persons was "mayhem" (q.v.), an Anglo-French variant form of the word. Maiming of animals by others than their owners is a particular form of the offences generally grouped as "malicious damage." For the purpose of the law as to this offence animals are divided into cattle, which includes horses, pigs and asses, and other animals which are either subjects of larceny at common law or are usually kept in confinement or for domestic purposes. The punishment for maiming of cattle is three to fourteen years' penal servitude. Malicious injury to other animals is a misdemeanour punishable on summary conviction. For a second offence the penalty is imprisonment with hard labour for over twelve months. (Malicious Damage Act 1861.) Maiming of animals by their owner falls under the Cruelty to Animals Acts. MAIMON, SALOMON (1754-1800), German philosopher, was born of Jewish parentage in Polish Lithuania, and died at Nieder-Siegersdorf on the 22nd of November 1800. He married at the age of twelve, and studied medicine in Berlin. In 1770 he severed his connexion with his orthodox co-religionists by his critical commentary on the _Moreh Nebuhim_ of Maimonides, and devoted himself to the study of philosophy on the lines of Wolff and Moses Mendelssohn. After many vicissitudes he found a peaceful residence in the house of Count Kalkreuth at Nieder-Siegersdorf in 1790. During the ensuing ten years he published the works which have made his reputation as a critical philosopher. Hitherto his life had been a long struggle against difficulties of all kinds. From his autobiography, it is clear that his keen critical faculty was developed in great measure by the slender means of culture at his disposal. It was not till 1788 that he made the acquaintance of the Kantian philosophy, which was to form the basis of his lifework, and as early as 1790 he published the _Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie_, in which he formulates his objections to the system. He seizes upon the fundamental incompatibility of a consciousness which can apprehend, and yet is separated from, the "thing-in-itself." That which is object of thought cannot be outside consciousness; just as in mathematics [root](-1) is an unreal quantity, so "things-in-themselves" are _ex hypothesi_ outside consciousness, i.e. are unthinkable. The Kantian paradox he explains as