SECT. 10.] Insurance and Gambling. 381 



single sum of 300 livres only. It is obvious that such a system 

 as this, though it may sometimes go by the name of insur 

 ance, is utterly opposed to the spirit of true insurance, 

 since it tends to aggravate existing inequalities of fortune 

 instead of to mitigate them. The insurer here bets that 

 he will die old ; in ordinary insurance he bets that he will 

 die young. 



Again, to take one final instance, common opinion often 

 regards the bank or company which keeps a rouge et noir 

 table, and the individuals who risk their money at it, as being 

 both alike engaged in gambling. So they may be, tech 

 nically, but for all practical purposes such a bank is as sure 

 and safe a business as that of any ordinary insurance society, 

 and probably far steadier in its receipts than the majority of 

 ordinary trades in a manufacturing or commercial city. The 

 bank goes in for many and small transactions, in proportion 

 to its capital ; their customers, very often, in proportion to 

 their incomes go in for very heavy transactions. That the 

 former comes out a gainer year after year depends, of course, 

 upon the fact that the tables are notoriously slightly in their 

 favour. But the steadiness of these gains when compared 

 with the unsteadiness of the individual losses depends simply 

 upon, in fact, is merely an illustration of, the one great 

 permanent contrast which lies at the basis of all reasoning 

 in Probability. 



10. We have so far regarded Insurance and Gambling 

 as being each the product of a natural impulse, and as having 

 each, if we look merely to experience, a great mass of human 

 judgment in its favour. The popular moral judgment, however, 

 which applauds the one and condemns the other rests in great 

 part upon an assumption, which has doubtless much truth 

 in it, but which is often interpreted with an absoluteness which 

 leads to error in each direction ; the duty of insurance being 



