CHAPTER XV. 



INSURANCE AND GAMBLING. 



1. IF the reader will recall to mind the fundamental 

 postulate of the Science of Probability, established and ex 

 plained in the first few chapters, and so abundantly illus 

 trated since, he will readily recognize that the two opposite 

 characteristics of individual irregularity and average regu 

 larity will naturally be differently estimated by different 

 minds. To some persons the elements of uncertainty may 

 be so painful, either in themselves or in their consequences, 

 that they are anxious to adopt some means of diminishing 

 them. To others the ultimate regularity of life, at any rate 

 within certain departments, its monotony as they consider it, 

 may be so wearisome that they equally wish to effect some 

 alteration and improvement in its characteristics. We shall 

 discuss briefly these mental tendencies, and the most simple 

 and obvious modes of satisfying them. 



To some persons, as we have said, the world is all too full 

 of change and irregularity and consequent uncertainty. Civi 

 lization has done much to diminish these characteristics in 

 certain directions, but it has unquestionably aggravated them 

 in other directions, and it might not be very easy to say with 

 certainty in which of these respects its operation has been, at 

 present, on the whole most effective. The diminution of 

 irregularity is exemplified, amongst other things, in the case 

 of the staple products which supply our necessary food and 



