CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS, FOOD FOR REFLECTION.

Gaming Indefensible—A False Idea of Happiness—Oriental Knowledge of Ethics—Origin of the Gaming Instinct—Blackstone’s Definition of Gaming—Gambling and Commerce Contrasted—The Gambler’s Philosophy—His End—The Gaming Table an Incentive to Suicide—Gambling Subversive of Social Order—The Gamester an Ishmaelite—Hereditary Vice—The Practice Condemned by Legislative Enactment—Jewish and Egyptian Statutes—How Gaming was Regarded by the Greeks and Romans—The Code of Justinian—The Common Law and Statutes of England Compared—The Enactments of American Legislatures Examined and Compared—The True Theory of Repression 67-73