LIFE INSURANCE AS A SCIENCE 209 



tainty itself is an element of danger." It is of the utmost importance 

 that this point should be thoroughly realized by the statesman and 

 the general public, so that from individual appreciation of insurance 

 as a beneficent social institution may evolve the national apprecia- 

 tion of insurance as an institution making for the security of society 

 and the well-being and effective protection of its members against the 

 uncertainties of human life. 



At the outset we must consider the relation of insurance to ethics, 

 for unless the business of insurance has the sanction of private and 

 public morality it would be to no purpose to discuss its social and 

 economic importance. One of the earliest objections to life insur- 

 ance was the view of its being a form of gambling and that to in- 

 sure one's life was not quite in harmony with religious duty. Even 

 to-day a religious sect called the Dunkards object to life insurance 

 on the ground that it has not biblical sanction, or at least, is not 

 specifically enjoined as a duty by biblical authority. Few things, 

 however, it would seem, are more readily susceptible of proof than 

 that insurance must of necessity be included in the moral forces 

 which make for the betterment of mankind, and especially for the 

 gradual amelioration of the condition of the poor. Life insurance 

 in particular appeals to man's moral sentiments, making for the 

 protection and support of others at the cost of self-sacrifice and self- 

 denial. So well has this been realized that almost from its earliest 

 history we hea of the duty of insurance, until to-day this sentiment 

 has become subconscious and a part of the conscience of civilized 

 man, practically the same under conditions of poverty as under 

 conditions of material well-being. 



Much injury has been done to the cause of insurance by the un- 

 fortunate and unwarranted assumption that there is a fundamental 

 identity between insurance and gambling. There is this much truth 

 in the assumption, that the fundamental laws of chance and prob- 

 ability have at times and with great skill been applied to efforts at 

 systematic gambling, but speaking generally, without much success. 

 Gambling, lotteries, and kindred attempts to gain by the losses o~f 

 others are intrinsically immoral in their results, while life insurance is 

 intrinsically moral .as a method and means for the advancement of 

 mankind. Insurance advances progress, while gambling retards it. 

 This fact is well brought out by Dymond in his Essays on Morality, 

 and is indorsed by Wayland in his Elements of Moral Science. Dymond 

 remarks, with particular reference to the duty of insurance against 

 fire, that " the merchant who conducts his business partly or wholly 

 with borrowed capital is not honest if he endangers the loss of an 

 amount of property which, if lost, would disable him from paying his 

 debts." To guard against this possible loss he holds that it would be 

 unjust under such circumstances not to insure, for the majority of 



