should devise a grand insurance society to cover almost every concern in life. They could not indeed abolish uncertainty, for the conditions of life are very far from permitting this, but they could without much difficulty get rid of the worst of the consequences of it. They might determine to insure not merely their lives, houses, ships, and other things in respect of which sudden and total loss is possible, but also to insure their business; in the sense of avoiding not only bankruptcy, but even casual bad years, on the same principle of commutation. Unfamiliar as such an aim may appear when introduced in this language, it is nevertheless one which under a name of suspicious import to the conservative classes has had a good deal of attention directed to it. It is really scarcely anything else than Communism, which might indeed be defined as a universal and compulsory[2] insurance society which is to take account of all departments of business, and, in some at least of its forms, to invade the province of social and domestic life as well.
Although nothing so comprehensive as this is likely to be practically carried out on any very large scale, it deserves notice that the principle itself is steadily spreading in every direction in matters of detail. It is, for instance, the great complaint against Trades Unions that they too often seek to secure these results in respect of the equalization of the workmen's wages, thus insuring to some degree against incompetence, as they rightly and wisely do against illness and loss of work. Again, there is the Tradesman's Mutual Protection Society, which insures against the occasional loss entailed by the necessity of having to conduct prosecutions at law. There are societies in many towns for the prosecution of petty thefts, with the object of escaping the same uncertain and perhaps serious loss. Amongst instances of insurance for the people rather than by them, there is of course the giant example of the English Poor Law, in which the resemblance to an initial Communistic system becomes very marked. The poor are insured against loss
of work arising not only from illness and old age, but from any cause except wilful idleness. They do not, it is true, pay the whole premium, but since they mostly bear some portion of the burden of municipal and county taxation they must certainly be considered as paying a part of the premium. In some branches also of the public and private services the system is adopted of deducting a percentage from the wage or salary, for the purpose of a semi-compulsory insurance against death, illness or superannuation.
§ 6. Closely connected with Insurance, as an application of Probability, though of course by contrast, stands Gambling. Though we cannot, in strictness, term either of these practices the converse of the other, it seems nevertheless correct to say that they spring from opposite mental tendencies. Some persons, as has been said, find life too monotonous for their taste, or rather the region of what can be predicted with certainty is too large and predominant in their estimation. They can easily adopt two courses for securing the changes they desire. They may, for one thing, aggravate and intensify the results of events which are comparatively incapable of prevision, these events not being in themselves of sufficient importance to excite any strong emotions. The most obvious way of doing this is by betting upon them. Or again, they may invent games or other pursuits, the individual contingencies of which are entirely removed from all possible human prevision, and then make heavy money consequences depend upon these contingencies. This is gambling proper, carried on mostly by means of cards and dice and the roulette.
The gambling spirit, as we have said, seeks for the excitement of uncertainty and variety. When therefore people make a long continued practice of playing, especially if the stakes for which they play are moderate in comparison with their fortune, this uncertainty from the nature of the case begins to diminish. The thoroughly practised gambler, if he possesses more than usual skill (in