THE ETHICS OF GAMES OF CHANCE.
WE have often pointed out how hopeless is the attempt to get at any definition of gambling which will prove it to be essentially wrong, though we fully admit and earnestly maintain that gambling as a habit is one of the most demoralising of all habits as well as one of the most con- tagious. In the discussion yesterday week in the Canterbury Diocesan Conference, Archdeacon Smith cautiously defined gambling as " the risking of sums larger than a man could afford to lose on ventures over which he could exercise little or no control." But cautious as he was, he was not cautions enough, at least on one side of the question. We think it should be regarded as of the essence of gambling, not only that the risk is one over which you have no control, but also one against which, even if you could, you would not wish to insure yourself : for there are a hundred risks over which you have no control against which, if you are wise, you will talc care to insure yourself by one means or another, whereas in all proper gambling you really intend and prefer to risk loss for the sake of the possible gain. And next, the definition ought to have included words to show that the risk of the gambler is incurred for the purposes of amusement only, otherwise the limitation of gambling to the risk of sums " larger than a man could afford to lose," would appear to imply that very rich men who take pleasure in gambling, might properly waste very large sums on it so long as they do not thereby endanger their resources as a whole. Now, we think that though it may be right to risk for amusement as much on a game of chance as one would pay for any other amusement which is an amusement only,—without any gain of either health, or instruction, or benevolent satisfaction;—it is not right to spend on the mere amusing excitement of a game of chance nearly so much as one might rightly spend on a health- ful or cultivating recreation. If a game be made more cheerful by a little of the excitement of pure chance as to who will be the gainers and who the losers,—as games have been made and will be made more cheerful as long as human nature and youth remain what they are,—we can see no more harm in losing small sums for such a purpose than in losing them for the purposes of a. cooling drink in summer or a hot drink in winter. But the difference between gambling and almost every other amusement is that it combines no advantage of a higher order with the ad- vantage of excitement. It does not involve exercise ; it does not teach anything, unless it be a little coolness and self-control ; it -does not cultivate the sense of beauty, like gazing at beautiful scenes ; it does not sustain the body; and unless very moderately indulged in, instead of refreshing and restoring, it rather heats and exhausts the mind. It is, therefore, an amusement which has fewer constituents of a noble kind than any other amusement, and that must be taken into account in reckoning how much even a very rich man ought to afford to spend upon it. If the risk were for any higher purpose than pure amusement, we should justify a very much greater risk of wealth and time and thought upon it than we ever could upon gambling ; but then, if the risk were for any higher purpose than pure amusement, nobody would think of calling it gambling at all. For instance, a very rich man might very rightly risk a great deal more for the purpose of discovering whether a seam of coal on his estate were worth working or not, than he could rightly risk for his own amusement ; and hardly any risk would be thought too great for the sake of succouring a ship en- dangered in an Arctic expedition, however slight the hope and however great the cost. Nor would any one dream of calling such a venture " gambling." It is of the very essence of gambling that the venture shall be for no higher purpose than that of amusement, though, of course, it may be for a lower purpose, supposing a man were ignorant enough and selfish enough to think that be could steadily win other people's money from them by playing at a game of pure chance, or wicked enough to hope to win it by trading on knowledge which makes the risk to his competitors an unfair one.
But then, it is said that even within the limits we have assigned, gambling must necessarily be wrong, because it teaches us to enjoy risk, to teach our expectations to lean upon favourable chances instead of upon the secure earnings of sober industry. To that we should reply that the encounter with risk is a very important part of the duty as well as the accomplishment of man, and that the objectionable element in gambling is not by any means the habituation of the mind to a certain heightening of the interest in pursuits that are accompanied by a good deal of risk, but in learning to prize that heightening of interest too highly for its own sake when it is divorced from any higher end. That men should feel a certain heightening of interest in the face of risks of which they cannot compute the magnitude, is perfectly natural; and if that heightening of interest did not enter into the heart of every daring work, English daring "would not be the admired, perhaps too much admired, quality it actually is. The doctor faces risk, often great risk, in the treatment of disease of which he only half-understands the causes and conditions ; the great preacher faces risk in the treatment of premisses and arguments of which he can only half-calculate the precise effect on his audience ; the engineer faces risk, sometimes enormous risk, in almost every original experiment he undertakes ; and, above all, every captain of a ship, to say nothing of its being a ship-of-war, habitually encounters risk in battling with the elements. If in all such cases there were not a certain heightening of the interest in proportion to the risk, very few of the more practical enterprises of this world would be half as well discharged as they actually are. Bishop Butler has said that " probability is the guide of life." But if so, there is exceedingly little life, and hardly any important act of life, in which risk has not to be faced steadily and coolly. But there is no gambling in all that. It is the preference for encountering risk for the sake of risk, as a mere distraction, as an amusement, and an amusement uncombined with any other element of advantage, that is of the very essence of gambling. It may be a man's highest duty to encounter risks infinitely more serious than his risk of serious loss at any ordinary game of chance such as it would pay the conductors of the game to pro- vide, though that risk is equivalent to a certainty of loss in any long series of trials. Still, there are a thousand risks which men of action run, and rightly run, and run - often, in the course of their lives, in which they expose life itself to far greater peril than that to which they expose their property in the ordinary gambling games. But then they have a noble object in the one case, and only an ignoble object in the other. Still, this being fully conceded, there can be nothing wrong in making an amusement of running a small risk, so long as the price you pay for that amusement is not more than the price that you would pay for any other amusement equally devoid of useful or of noble elements. Suppose it right to pay two guineas for the pleasure of looking at a Royal procession, or half-a-guinea for seeing a Lord Mayor's Show, then we do not see how it can be contended that an equally rich person is committing a sin in spending the same sums on a week's whist, or on a round game at cards which amuses a number of young people for an hour or two. What is culpable in gambling is spending on it any sum which you would be ashamed to spend on the most trivial of all distractions of any other kind. For a game of chance played for money is an utterly trivial amusement, of which the best that can be said is that it gives a certain amount of discipline to the understanding and character, in teaching a true estimate of the element of chance on the one hand, and cheerful indifference to trivial gain or trivial loss on the other hand. But it seems to us that if the right limits be assigned to risk at such games of chance, there is at least not less, per- haps we might justly say, a good deal more, to be said for them than can be said for spending such sums as are actually spent on the gratification of the palate or the mere dazzling of the eye. In games of chance you do learn to realise practically what it means in life to have the odds against you, as men so often must have them against them in much more serious matters, and matters where it is far less possible to calculate the amount of the odds against them. You might learn, too, and often do learn, how much piquancy is given to otherwise very stupid occupations by the uncertainty of the issue. And you certainly get a very good opportunity of practising equanimity in small reverses and magnanimity in small successes. Take it all in all, we hold that games of chance played for such trivial sums as a man may properly pay for the most trivial of other amusements, are by no means wrong, though it is extremely wrong to encourage in yourself so great a taste for the excitement of risk that you are willing to pay for that excitement as much as you would pay for the moat healthful and ennobling of human recreations, recreations which develop the body, or cultivate the mind, or stimulate the soul. We do not believe that there can be any wrong in enjoying in a moderate way in pure play, the sort of excitement which all great explorers, all great scholars, all great pioneers, all great soldiers, all great sailors, enjoy in a large way in the pursuit of their various objects in life. But when the element of risk is sought after for itself alone, when it is entirely dissociated from any useful or noble or beautiful object beyond itself, then it ought undoubtedly to be kept, and jealously kept, within very narrow limits, and not permitted. so to eat into the nature that everything seems to be tame and uninteresting which is not flavoured with risk. After all, the certainties of life are infinitely greater and higher than the uncertainties, and the one delight which it is impossible to connect in any sense with the divine, should not be the one in which man finds his most vivid satisfaction.
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