THE ETHICS OF GAMBLING. [To 7112 ED1TOB On ran SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—One statement of the moral wrong of gambling seems to me worth considering. It was suggested to me twenty years ago by a friend. " Gambling is a gratuitous stimulating of the appetite for getting." This formula explains one terrific fact about the consequences of prolonged gambling— viz., that alone among vices it destroys all the unselfish instincts and leaves its victim a person on whom every moral appeal is wasted. It also explains by analogy the pleasure accompanying gambling. The appetite for getting is a natural appetite, like that for food : and all needless or artificial stimulation of a natural appetite is pleasurable though disastrous. But there is a difference. Over-eating is not so much a needless stimula lion of an appetite as its indulgence. The gambler cannot strictly be said to indulge his appetite for getting unless he gets—i.e., wins. But the appetite for getting is unlike others in that it causes an absorbing pleasure by being simply stimulated without being satisfied. Hence another deadly quality of it is that it is not followed by wholesome and painful reaction. Immunity from the crapulous headache makes remorse and repentance alike difficult. Another essential point is that gambling is an artificial increasing of the element of chance in human life. Herein, I suspect, it conflicts with a recognition of God : because the more one gives oneself to Chance, the more one disowns Law : and Law is a manifestation of the Divine. Notice also that a certain excuse for one form of betting is inadmissible for gambling. If two men knowing an equal amount about a disputed ques- tion which can be verified are inclined to wax warm, A's offer to pay five shillings if he is wrong or the challenge to B to meet him half-way are attempts to give assurance of sincerity, and perhaps to keep the peace : anyhow, to close the discus- sion pro tem. But there is no such argument for penny point.:
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