Did not Herod look on the matter just in that light? Expecting Christ to be, not a spiritual, but a temporal ruler, as the Jewish nation supposed at the time, he looked upon it as a case of necessity to sacrifice the lives of the innocents for his own preservation. "Necessity knows no law" was his principle. True, many had to die on that occasion to save one; but then he was a king. Anyhow, their death was necessary, and _necessitas non habet legem_; that settles it: Herod must not be blamed, on that principle. It is not even certain that, cruel as he was, he would have confessed, with the modern obstetrician, "I would as lief, if it were necessary, kill an unborn child as a rat." Such sentiments, revolting as they are, and a disgrace to civilization, are the natural outcome of rash speculations about the first principles of morality. The principle "_Necessitas non habet legem_" has indeed a true and harmless meaning when properly understood; it means that no law is violated when a man does what he is physically necessitated to do, and that no law can compel him to do more than he can do. Thus a disabled soldier cannot be compelled to march on with his regiment; necessity compels him to remain behind. In this sense the principle quoted is a truism; hence its universal acceptance. Applying the same principle in a wider sense, moralists agree that human law-givers do not, and in ordinary circumstances cannot, impose obligations the fulfilment of which requires extraordinary virtue. Even God Himself does not usually exact of men the performance of positive heroic acts. But no such plea can be urged to justify acts which God forbids by the natural law.[1] When necessity is used as a synonym for a "very strong reason," as it is in the plea of the craniotomist, then it is utterly false that very strong reasons for doing an act cannot be set aside by a divine law to the contrary; what is wrong in itself can never become right, even though the strongest arguments could be adduced in its favor. It would be doing wrong that good may come of it, or making the end justify the means. Such principles may be found in the code of tyrants and criminals, but should not be looked for in the code of Medical Jurisprudence. [1] See this point more fully treated in the Author's "Moral Philosophy," Book. I. c. ii., "The Morality of Human Acts." There is but one plea left, I believe, on which, of late years, it is sometimes attempted to justify the murder of little children. It is the plea of some evolutionists who maintain that the infant has not yet a true human soul. I should not deign to consider this theory if it were not that I find it seriously treated by a contributor to the "Medical Record," in an article which, on September 4, 1895, concluded a long discussion on craniotomy published in that learned periodical.