With regard, however, to the desire for excitement and a certain fulness of life, there are causes operating which differ widely in the cases of the rich and the poor. The monotony of the rich is a monotony of surfeit. They have means to satisfy all their material needs, and the very fact that they need not strive after anything brings satiety into everything, and with it the craving for excitement. And excitement in abundance may be found in gambling. This has been well put by Dr. Robertson:— What we want is life, “more life and fuller.” To escape from monotony, to get away from the life of mere routine and habits, to feel that we are alive—with more of surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of the gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. “To feel the years before us.” To be consciously existing. Now, this desire lies at the bottom of many forms of life which are apparently as diverse as possible. It constitutes the fascination of the gambler’s life; money is not what he wants—were he possessed of thousands to-day he would risk them all to-morrow—but it is that, being perpetually on the brink of enormous wealth and utter ruin, he is compelled to realise at every moment the possibility of extremes of life. Every moment is one of feeling. In the case of the poor, on the other hand, monotony of life arises from the very absence of the external advantages of the wealthier. The young man, after a day of monotonous toil in some uninteresting occupation, has too often to come home to his small and overcrowded house in a dingy back street, where his only living room is one which must serve the purposes of kitchen, nursery, parlour, and dining-room, and where he can find no relief from the noisy children. His mental horizon is extremely limited, and he has hardly any intellectual interests. He cannot afford the forms of recreation that would be indulged in by his unintellectual brother among the richer classes of Society, and yet he has the same desire for “life.” He thinks to get it cheaply by betting. Again, the desire of gain without work is common to all classes. With the well-to-do and the professional, it may take the reputable form of speculating in stocks and shares—a large proportion of a sharebroker’s business is notoriously for speculative clients; but the poor also may succumb to the temptation, though on a humbler scale. The writer heard recently of a woman who had her family to maintain, and who, with but one shilling in the world, staked it on a horse in the hope of mending matters. If then the causes of gambling are so widespread, and are due to conditions all but universal in this country, can anything be done in the way of remedy?