JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 39 



time as stakes were laid, or bets made on the possible results, the 

 element of gambling found its way in, and there is no feature of 

 primitive or savage life so universally prevalent as is this, and there 

 is no inheritance from the long-ago which has clung to civilized 

 men with more persistence than the spirit of gambling, which is 

 neither more nor less than an unintelligent and wholly blind trust in 

 luck, and it is notorious that among no class of people more than 

 among confirmed gamblers is abject superstition so supreme, and 

 superstition of every kind is an inheritance for which we have to 

 thank our savage ancestry. 



Games of skill may have originated as mimic combats in 

 friendly guise. It would be difficult to name one which does not 

 involve loss and defeat on the one hand with capture and victory on 

 the other. They all appear to be modifications of old-time pugna- 

 city- — of the days when family feuds and tribal wars were maintained 

 fully as much for the sake of gore and glory as for aggrandizement, 

 Most of our popular games, whether indoor or outdoor, demand that 

 something shall be hit, or some person or some place captured, and 

 so persistent is the ancient idea of war involved in the playing of 

 such games, that even in many of the quietest and most thoughtfully 

 conducted ones, we speak of the pieces employed as " men," and as 

 men whom it is a duly to " take " if possible. 



In athletic sports, again, muscle is, of necessity, the chief pre- 

 requisite, and while it must be patent to everybody that although in 

 these almost twentieth century days there is comparatively little 

 need for the exercise of excessive brute force, we find many of 

 our fellow-beings devoting their lives to the attainment of notoriety or 

 of celebrity, as the case may be, in walking, running, wrestling and 

 rowing, not for recreation or occasional diversion only, but as so- 

 called " professionals," while those of us who for many reasons may 

 be unable to practice such exercises ourselves, manifest a decidedly 

 lively interest in the doings of these latter-day savages, even to the 

 extent of betting heavy odds for or against a particular contestant, 

 in this way laying ourselves alike open to the charge of exemplifying 

 by inheritance an ancient savage predilection, for betting is but 

 gambling, and all gambling operations are only the improved, 

 refined, systemetized, i.e., evolutionized forms of deity or fetish 

 placation -or cajolery, practised universally in the early days of 

 human society, as I have already said. 



