The Ethics of Gambling
THE Ethics of Gambling is a topic upon which thinking men cannot to-day afford to be silent. For the question is not one merely of the effects of gambling— these may appear good or bad, according to circum- stances—but one of principle. If it is true that in essence gambling is the lack of all principle, whereas goodness essentially depends upon principle, the practice will stand condemned as inherently bad. Only an analysis of principles can establish universal propositions on the subject.
To Make the argument as cogent as possible we shall put the case for gambling in the most favourable manner in order that when refuted its refutation may be irre- fragable and complete. The practice shall have all the advantages that can possibly accrue to it : the gambler shall not risk more than he can afford, and the people whose money he wins shall not feel the deprivation : the winner shall expend his winnings wisely and do much good. The non-gambler, on the other hand, shall be urgently in need of money to spend for the great benefit of mankind. But' though • he can easily afford the stakes he steadfastly refuses to gamble, and the good which he could have done remains undone. He has lost an opportunity of doing great good for the sake of a theory. Does this not show a narrow mind and a wrong scale of values, an insistence upon the letter which killeth as against the spirit ? This is the question to which we must address ourselves.
Our 'first-task must be to state clearly the principle of gambling. • The essence of all forms of gambling is the staking of something of value upon an- event of pure chance, 'which staking is unnecessary. We must insist upon the word " pure." The planting of seeds in the hope that they will germinate, though a chance, is not pure chance. A new business venture, though risky, is not pure chance if its promoters are business men. Nor are the much-discussed activities upon the Stock Exchange or in Futures pure chance. Apart altogether from the economic justification of these in their effect upon prices, no professional speculator will risk his money upon pure chance. There is a distinction between risk or uncer- tainty on one hand, and pure chance on the other. Un- skilled people may speculate on the Stock Exchange- i.e., lay their money on what is subjectively an event of pure chance, without properly examining the situation. This all agree is gambling, is the bane of the Stock Exchange, and is to be clearly differentiated from the legitimate use of speculation, which is a rational attempt to anticipate price movements and so restrict their range.
Cases of legitimate risk or uncertainty are those in which the agent acts on incomplete knowledge, but never on none: He believes he knows the essential facts which
will determine the event. Such events must be deter- minable by laws which arc at least theoretically know- able, and the uncertainty here is subjective—i.e., not in the event, but in our knowledge of it. But in genuine gambling--e.g., lotteries par excellence—the operation of such laws is deliberately frustrated and the event left to pure chance. The uncertainty is not merely in the mind of the gambler but is in the event itself : it is objective. Further, it is important to insist that pure gambling is unnecessary. The taking of risks is necessary at all junctures in life and in business, and cannot be con- demn ed. But the taking of unnecessary risks is gambling and is always condemned. The whole question, of course, turns upon the interpretation of the word " necessary." A risk is unnecessary if it has no relation to a purpose, but is undertaken solely for its own sake.
This brings us to the heart of the problem ; and here we must make an excursus into the nature of the Good. All philosophers and thinkers, however much they may disagree on the definition of " good," agree on this point —that principle, form or pattern is essential to the notion. The Greeks were perhaps most clear on this point, and for a comprehensive account of Goodness their view has hardly been surpassed. Conceiving the good man on the analogy of the artist or craftsman, and life on the analogy of Art in its general sense (d". Plato, Republic, and. Aristotle, Nie. Ethics), they saw that the task of the good man was to impose order upon the formless mass of experience—the emotions, impulses, cognitions and all the phenomena of life, which occur haphazard. To acquiesce in this haphazard occurrence was to renounce one's birthright as a human being. To impose one's own order upon it was to be free, to rise superior to the plants and animals and to live a good life. Harmony, order, pattern, purpose, constituted for the Greeks the essence of goodness ; their absence the essence of badness.
The great philosopher of modern times, Immanuel Kant, though differing in many respect from the Greeks, insisted also upon the good life as being life in accordance with law, and Reason is the source of all law, and in the sphere of morals the Giver of the Moral Law. The essence of badness is to be governed by adventitious circum- stances and to deny Reason its rightful place. From the Christian point of view, too, this insistence upon purpose is fundamental. One cannot drift into the Kingdom of Heaven upon the wave of a lucky chance. Admittance is gained only by merit, and the fortuitous events of life play no part in the calculation of this. But deliberately to seek unnecessary risk is implicitly to deny this principle. In fact, we find that the essence of all morality and of all ethical systems is the attempt to impose an ordered plan upon the haphazard and accidental nature of experience and to assert the ethical irrelevance of chance. If this is so, it clearly follows that gambling, as the deliberate introduction of chance into life, is ethically wrong. It is the negation of principle, and this is the essence of the bad life. It is not the taking of risks that is wrong, but the deliberate introduction of objective uncertainty and the desertion of policy.
Further, we can now show that it is disadvantageous to the gambler—i.e., that our principled non-gambler who thus cuts himself off from the opportunity of doing good, is really better off than the opportunist who will gamble on occasion when he appears to have nothing to lose and everything to gain. For the principle of gambling is the negation of all that is specifically human in life. In so far as a man stakes anything upon pure chance it is not he that lives, but his environment that lives through him. This is to renounce his right to direct and create his own life and to live the life of an inanimate object at the mercy of its environment. It is to lose one's soul. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?
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