350 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that it alienates from business, and leads into bad company these, 

 and such as these, are the reasons given for condemning the practice. 

 Rarely is there any recognition of the fundamental reason. Rarely is 

 gambling condemned because it is a kind of action by which pleasure 

 is obtained at the cost of pain to another. The normal obtainment of 

 gratification, or of the money which purchases it, implies, in the first 

 place, that there has been put forth equivalent effort of a kind which, 

 in some way, furthers the general good ; and implies, in the second 

 place, that those from whom the money is received, get, directly or in- 

 directly, equivalent satisfactions. But in gambling the opposite hap- 

 pens. Benefit received does not imply effort put forth ; and the happi- 

 ness of the winner involves the misery of the loser. This kind of 

 action is therefore essentially anti-social sears the sympathies, culti- 

 vates a hard egoism, and so produces a general deterioration of char- 

 acter and conduct. 



Clearly, then, a visionary hope misleads those who think that in an 

 imagined age of reason, which might forthwith replace an age of be- 

 liefs but partly rational, conduct would be correctly guided by a code 

 directly based on considerations of utility. A utilitarian system of 

 ethics cannot at present be correctly thought out even by the select 

 few, and is quite beyond the mental reach of the many. The value of 

 the inherited and theologically-enforced code is that it formulates, with 

 some approach to correctness, the accumulated results of past human 

 experience. It has not arisen rationally but empirically. During all 

 past times mankind have eventually gone right after trying all pos- 

 sible ways of going wrong. The wrong-goings have been habitually 

 checked by disaster, and pain, and death ; and the right-goings have 

 been continued because not thus checked. There has been a growth 

 of beliefs corresponding to these good and evil results. Hence the 

 code of conduct, embodying discoveries slowly and almost uncon- 

 sciously made through a long series of generations, has transcendent 

 authority on its side. 



Nor is this all. Were it possible forthwith to replace a tradition- 

 ally-established and supernaturally-warranted system of rules by a 

 system of rules rationally elaborated, no such rationally-elaborated 

 system of rules would be adequately operative. To think that it 

 would implies the thought that men's beliefs and actions are through- 

 out determined by intellect ; whereas they are in much larger degrees 

 determined by feeling. 



There is a wide difference between the formal assent men give to a 

 proposition they cannot gainsay, and the efficient belief which pro- 

 duces active conformity to it. Often the most conclusive argument 

 fails to produce a conviction capable of swaying conduct ; and often 

 mere assertion, with great emphasis and signs of confidence on the 

 part of .the utterer, will produce efficient conviction where there is no 



