SECT. 20.] Insurance and Gambling. 391 



that the common way of stating the conclusion is rather 

 misleading; and that, on the assumption in question as 

 to the law of dependence of happiness on wealth, it really is 

 the case that the effective element in rendering gambling 

 disadvantageous is its tendency to the increase of the in 

 equality in the distribution of wealth. 



20. This raises two questions, one of some speculative 

 interest in connection with our subject, and the other of 

 supreme importance in the conduct of life. The first is this : 

 quite apart from any particular assumption which we make 

 about moral fortunes or laws of variation of happiness, is 

 it the fact that gambling tends to increase the existing 

 inequalities of wealth ? Theoretically there is no doubt that 

 this is so. Take the simplest case and suppose two people 

 tossing for a pound. If their fortunes were equal to begin 

 with there must be resultant inequality. If they were 

 unequal there is an even chance of the inequality being 

 increased or diminished; but since the increase is propor 

 tionally greater than the decrease, the final result remains of 

 the same kind as when the fortunes were equal 1 . Taking a 

 more general view the same conclusion underlies all our 

 reasoning as to the averages of large numbers, viz. that the 

 resultant divergencies increase absolutely (however they 

 diminish relatively) as the numbers become greater. And of 

 course we refer to these absolute divergencies when we 

 are talking of the distribution of wealth. 



1 This may be seen more clearly of the average; for there are only 

 as follows. Suppose two pair of two alternatives and these will be 

 gamblers, each pair consisting of equally frequent in the long run. 

 men possessing 50 and 30 re- It is obvious that we have had two 

 spectively. Now if we suppose the fortunes of 50 and two of 30 con- 

 richer man to win in one case and verted into one of 20, two of 40, 

 the poorer in the other these two and one of 60. And this is clearly 

 results will be a fair representation an increase of inequality. 



