Injurious treatment of living creatures, too, is often due to the same instinct. In the desire to investigate, the principle of the golden rule is forgotten. It would be too optimistic, however, to assume that such things are never done from cruelty. Fischart says that even well-disposed children reveal the demon of fighting and destruction when there is a beetle or a broken-winged bird or a wounded cat to torment. Most readers will recall some reminiscence of their own youth when they really enjoyed inflicting injury on some living thing. It may assume a dangerous form when directed against other persons. Some years ago a number of children at play intentionally drowned a comrade; and Fr. Scholz tells us, “An eight-year-old girl with an angelic face secretly put some pins in her little brother’s food, and calmly awaited the catastrophe, which fortunately was averted.” “A girl twelve years old pushed a child of three, with whom she was playing, into a pile of paving stones for no other reason than that she might have the opportunity to tickle him cruelly.”[449] Among criminals murders may sometimes result from following this impulse. Some time ago three peasants were tried for the murder, with incredible cruelty, of a servant. They were father, son, and mother. After the old man had throttled his victim he said to his accomplices, “Now he is dead enough.” But the woman, to make sure, dealt a hard blow on the poor fellow’s head. “Now I think he has had enough, this fine rabbit that we have caught.”[450] Here the bounds between play and earnest are hard to place, but probably belong at the point where the prearranged plan is no longer the leading thought, it having given place to mad delight in inflicting injury. These matters are, after all, only on the threshold of play, and we will now turn our attention to subjects more important to our inquiry. 6. _Teasing_[451]