SECT. 11.] Insurance and Gambling. 383 



out, it would be simply a lottery), but is made contingent 

 upon some kind of loss, which it is intended as far as possible 

 to balance. I insure myself on a railway journey, break my 

 leg in an accident, and, having paid threepence for my 

 ticket, receive say 200 compensation from the insurance 

 company. The same remarks, however, apply here ; the 

 happiness I acquire by this 200 would only just balance the 

 aggregate loss of the 16,000 who have paid their threepences 

 and received no return for them, were happiness always 

 directly proportional to wealth. 



11. The practice of Insurance does not, I think, give 

 rise to many questions of theoretic interest, and need not 

 therefore detain us longer. The fact is that it has hardly 

 yet been applied sufficiently long and widely, or to matters 

 which admit of sufficiently accurate statistical treatment, 

 except in one department. This, of course, is Life Insurance ; 

 but the subject is one which requires constant attention to 

 details of statistics, and is (rightly) mainly carried out in 

 strict accordance with routine. As an illustration of this 

 we need merely refer to the works of De Morgan, a profes 

 sional actuary as well as a writer on the theory of Probability, 

 who has found but little opportunity to aid his speculative 

 treatment of Probability by examples drawn from this class 

 of considerations. 



With Gambling it is otherwise. Not only have a variety 

 of interesting single problems been discussed (of which the 

 Petersburg problem is the best known) but several specula 

 tive questions of considerable importance have been raised. 

 One of these concerns the disadvantages of the practice of 

 gambling. There have been a number of writers who, not 

 content with dwelling upon the obvious moral and indirect 

 mischief which results, in the shape of over-excitement, 

 consequent greed, withdrawal from the steady business 



