LIFE INSURANCE AS A SCIENCE 217 



p 



of certain contingencies, and the special contract provisions of the 

 policy which form the legal basis of the relation of the insured to the 

 company. 



The principles of risk and insurance are of too abstract a nature 

 to be comprehended by the average mind, even after a considerable 

 amount of intelligent explanation. The elements of insurance prac- 

 tice and results, however, are readily within the mental grasp of all 

 but a small proportion of the public, and while in consequence of 

 the enormous development of the business there exists a vague gen- 

 eral consciousness of the insurance idea, it is but imperfectly under- 

 stood and not operative on conduct. We are taught by psychology 

 that " an object must be seen many times before it is rightly seen," 

 and the abstract idea of insurance does not become concrete and 

 operative on conduct until it has been emphasized and reemphasized 

 by the insurance instructor, who is called the agent or solicitor. The 

 immense success of industrial insurance, with now more than forty 

 million policy-holders in the world, is due largely to the simplicity of 

 the idea itself so much to be paid each week so much receivable 

 in the event of death which is readily within the mental grasp of 

 all the people. In the more complex form of ordinary life insurance, 

 especially when combined with investment, as in the case of endow- 

 ments, the process of insurance education is much more difficult 

 and results are secured more slowly. What is true of the progress 

 of life at large is equally true of the progress of insurance, that " the 

 adjustment of inner tendencies to outer persistencies must begin with 

 the simple and advance to the complex, seeing that both within and 

 without complex relations, being made up of simple ones, cannot 

 be established before simple ones have been established." 



Abnormal psychology has already been briefly referred to under 

 neurology. The psychology of suggestion in its special relation to 

 the occurrence of mental epidemics is of considerable interest to 

 life insurance companies. The present-day frequency of self- 

 destruction and the unquestionable effect of suggestion in causing 

 small epidemics of suicide of a local character is a source of consid- 

 erable anxiety to the management of conservative insurance com- 

 panies. What is summed up in a dissertation on The Wonders of 

 Human Folly explains the need from time to time to recur to the 

 experience of the past for an explanation of the experiences and 

 occurrences of the present. Mackay's Memoirs of Popular Delusions, 

 for illustration, throw much light upon recent experiences, and it has 

 been said with much truth that while " time and progress have 

 changed the manifestation, the spirit of ancient folly lingers still. 

 . . . From time to time the infatuation to acquire wealth speedily 

 by an illegitimate shifting of the cards rather than by safe and equit- 

 able methods in the employment of capital and labor, seizes the 



