210 INSURANCE 



uninsured traders, if their houses and goods were burned, would be 

 unable to pay their creditors. The injustice, in his opinion, consists 

 in the taking of needless or unnecessary risk. Had life insurance in 

 1836, when this was written, been developed to the present extent 

 of a universal provident institution, the Quaker moralist would, 

 without question, have enjoined with even greater emphasis the duty 

 of insurance protection for widows and orphans and self-protection 

 against want in old age. 



The second great division of science in the classification adopted 

 by this Congress is mathematics, itself the foundation stone of insur- 

 ance theory and development. Without mathematics life insurance 

 could not be thought of as a science, nor could its progress long con- 

 tinue without the application of mathematical checks to intricate 

 processes, the real nature of which can only be explained by mathe- 

 matical researches. It has, in fact, been common usage for many 

 years to speak of the work of the actuary as actuarial science, and 

 the training of the actuary and the required quality of his judgment 

 is very largely mathematical. It is a primary necessity if he is to 

 possess the ability to master the more subtle problems of insurance 

 theory. It is, however, with much justice that Young and other 

 writers hold that " every problem in life insurance administration - 

 the scope of investments, the ratio of expenditure, and the amount 

 of new business which will probably produce a favorable or disad- 

 vantageous effect upon profits - - possesses an actuarial aspect of 

 definite significance, and demands the application of professional 

 knowledge and experience." But primarily the work of the actuary 

 is concerned with the mathematical and fundamental nature of life 

 insurance as determined by the laws of human mortality and ex- 

 pectancy, upon which the vast business rests with absolute certainty 

 for the ultimate fulfillment of contract obligations. Some of the 

 greatest names in mathematical science and astronomy are those of 

 men who have rendered signal service to the cause of insurance. 

 From Fermat and Pascal, Newton and Leibnitz, Bernoulli and De 

 Moivre, Laplace and Que"telet, we have a long list of mathematical 

 philosophers extending to the present time, whose work has made 

 possible the development of the science of life contingencies. It is 

 upon the science of mathematics that the science of insurance rests, 

 and it is the actuary who applies abstract mathematical principles 

 to the solution of practical problems of business administration. 

 Hence the actuary must be more than a mathematician, and the 

 tendency of the age is constantly to enlarge the function of this office 

 by delegating the purely mathematical side of the work to qualified 

 mathematicians. Much remains to be done in the field of insurance 

 mathematics to develop the science and art of life contingencies to 

 its highest possible degree of perfection. Great indeed as is the work 



