So a society where force or fraud habitually or frequently displaces this sane process of acquiring property, where some persons eat bread _sudore vultus alieni_ and others consequently sweat without eating, is not only economically enfeebled, but is irrationally constituted. And this unreason in the social organism corrupts and derationalises the individual members. But even an unjustly ordered society, where the domination of one class is accompanied by the subjection of another, where organised parasitism or plunder prevails, differs from “anarchy” as regards its reactions upon the intelligence of man. A bad system, the worst of systems, is less derationalising than no system. So the habitual exploitation of the poor by the rich, the “have-nots” by the “haves,” though substantially irrational in the modes of acquisition of property involved, is less demoralising than the abandonment of the determination of property to pure chance. Gambling involves the denial of all system in the apportionment of property: it plunges the mind in a world of anarchy, where things come upon one and pass from one miraculously. It does not so manifestly sin against the canons of justice as do other bad modes of transfer,—theft, fraud, sweating,—for every one is said to have an equal chance; but it inflicts a graver damage on the intellect. Based as it is on an organised rejection of all reason as a factor, it removes its devotees into a positive atmosphere of miracles, and generates an emotional excitement that inhibits those checks which reason more or less contrives to place upon emotional extravagances. The essence of gambling consists in an abandonment of reason, an inhibition of the factors of human control. In the history of mankind, civilisation of the individual has chiefly consisted in and been measured by this increased capacity of rational control—a slow, gradual, imperfect taming of the animal instincts which made for emotional anarchy of conduct. This assertion of rational control, implying some sort of plan in life, restraints on conduct, and trust in orderly processes of phenomena, has doubtless been most imperfectly established even in the picked members of the more highly civilised races. But such as it is, it represents order in society and progress in humanity.