clear by a vast amount of statistical data obtained from observations
among persons insured in life insurance companies among annuitants,
among inhabitants of various towns and cities, and among the whole
population in certain countries, notably in England and in Belgium. One
uniform, unvarying, certain law has been thus established, which is that
the rate of mortality, or in other words the cost of insurance,
increases as a man grows older. From this law there is no escape. We
must accept the inevitable. Hence any system of insurance which is not
in accordance with this first principle, this unalterable law of nature,
is unsound, and any company, whether charging level premiums or natural
premiums, which does not recognize and conform to this fundamental law
of nature, is doomed to disaster and wreck, sooner or later.

There are two methods of life insurance worthy of the name, and two
only. The one is by payments accurately adjusted to the cost of
insurance at each actual age, and which inevitably, unavoidably and
inexorably, must increase with the age of the person insured, and the
other is by level, or uniform payments extending over the whole duration
of life or for a stated number of years. The first is the natural system
and has been adopted _in part_, and imperfectly, by assessment
companies; the second is the artificial system, and is the one which has
been offered exclusively until lately, by all the regular life insurance
companies. Properly carried out, the one is as sound in theory and as
safe in practice as the other. In fact, the artificial premiums are the
exact mathematical or commuted equivalents of the natural premiums.

Until within the last decade, the level premium system was practically
the only one in use. Since then there have come into existence hundreds
of co-operative or assessment companies. These institutions have had a
wonderful growth. It is claimed that the number of members and the