The curious cunning expended in devising “systems” and the attention to multifarious incidents of “luck” indicate a genuine inhibition of the reasoning faculty. Both modes of manipulating chance are vitiated by the same two fallacies. Belief in the efficacy of a “system” implies that a series of consecutive coups is a causally connected chain, whereas, in fact, the result of each coup is entirely unaffected by the coup which preceded or follows it. The “system” gambler also believes that he is able to forecast to some extent the drift or current of chances which makes this causal connection. Similarly with the cruder superstitions, such as the notion that a virgin player will win his opening bout of play, or that turning one’s chair or changing one’s seat will break a spell of bad luck: they also imply that a sequence of separately determined events is in some unintelligible way a mutually determined group, and that a tendency running through the series can be altered by a casual or purposed action which is interjected from outside. The amazing hold which these superstitious notions obtain over persons of education and intelligence is a striking testimony to the intellectual havoc wrought by gambling. How insidious is the illusion about runs of luck may be shown by the ease with which the minds of most persons, who are averse to gambling and would deride the notion of a “system,” fall into the snare when it is set in the following form: Enter a room where rouge-et-noir is going on and learn that red has turned up twenty times in succession, when the next card is in the act of being drawn there is an almost irresistible tendency to expect black, from a first impulsive judgment which has false reference to the general improbability of red turning up twenty-one times running. Most persons, including trained scientists to whom I have put the case, requiring an immediate reply, have admitted that they would be disposed to bet against red. A practice so corrupting to the intelligence not only of the habitué but even of the casual spectator stands condemned as a formidable enemy of education and of intellectual order. In thus exposing the irrationality of gambling, both as a mode of transferring property and as a mental occupation, I have implicitly exposed its immorality also. Its repudiation of equitable order involves at once an intellectual and a moral descent to a lower plane of thought and feeling. Perhaps no other human interest, not based on purely physical craving, arouses so absorbing a passion: alcoholism itself scarcely asserts a stronger dominion over its devotees.