When the lava came down from Vesuvius it buried Pompeiians who
were gambling.

The men who dig up the old monuments in Africa find gambling
instruments crumbling away side by side with appliances for
taking human life.

* * *

Nowhere in the lower forms of animal life, so far as we know, is
there the slightest indication of the gambling instinct.

The monkey, the elephant, love whiskey, and easily become
drunkards.

The passion for alcohol seems innate in animal life; even the
wise ant can be readily induced to disgrace himself if alcohol is
put near him.

For all the human weaknesses and mainsprings--ambition,
affection, vanity, drunkenness, ferocity, greediness, cunning--we
can find beginnings among the lower animals.

But man appears to have evolved from within himself the gambling
instinct for his own especial damnation.

Where did the instinct come from? Why was it planted in us?

Like every other instinct with which intelligent nature endows
us, it must have its good purpose, and it must not be judged