SECT. 8.] Insurance and Gambling. 379 



to judge and arrange them according to the names which 

 they currently bear, we should find ourselves led to no 

 kind of systematic division whatever; the fact being that 

 since they all alike involve, as their essential characteristic, 

 payments and receipts, one or both of which are necessarily 

 uncertain in their date or amount, the names may often be 

 interchanged. 



For instance, a lottery and an ordinary insurance society 

 against accident, if we merely look to the processes per 

 formed in them, are to all intents and purposes identical. 

 In each alike there is a small payment which is certain in 

 amount, and a great receipt which is uncertain in amount. 

 A great many persons pay the small premium, whereas a 

 few only of their number obtain a prize, the rest getting 

 no return whatever for their outlay. In each case alike, 

 also, the aggregate receipts and losses are intended to 

 balance each other, after allowing for the profits of those 

 who carry on the undertaking. But of course when we 

 take into account the occasions upon which the insurers 

 get their prizes, we see that there is all the difference in the 

 world between receiving them at haphazard, as in a lottery, 

 and receiving them as a partial set-off to a broken limb or 

 injured constitution, as in the insurance society. 



Again, the language of betting may be easily made to 

 cover almost every kind of insurance. Indeed De Morgan 

 has described life insurance as a bet which the individual 

 makes with the company, that he will not live beyond a 

 certain age. If he dies young, he is pecuniarily a gainer, if 

 he dies late he is a loser 1 . Here, too, though the expression 

 1 &quot;A fire insurance is a simple transaction in which the results of 

 bet between the office and the party, a future event are to bring gain or 

 and a life insurance is a collection loss.&quot; Penny Cyclopcedia, under the 

 of wagers. There is something of head of Wager. 

 the principle of a wager in every 



