The whole interest of betting on sport, and also of gambling, is another evidence of an unwholesome condition. It implies a craving for excitement apart from personal exertion, which is always a bane to character; it involves the idea of gain apart from labour of mind or body, which is demoralising to the sense of work; it results in unearned fluctuations, which induce a wasteful habit; and it is based on the essentially ungentlemanly principle of benefiting by the loss of another, whereas all honourable gain is by the sharing of the benefits of labour. If a large part of the public are determined on deteriorating in this manner, it might be better for the community to satisfy it by public lottery, where one party is the government, which at least removes the last-named serious detriment to character. The gaming at Monte Carlo is moral compared with promiscuous betting. The objections to such forms of interest are perhaps too often urged by moralists who wish to cause an alteration in the customs around them. Even if we can care for the benefit of persons with such interests, certainly we are not likely to make any difference to them by talking on the subject. But as students of diseased society we may take a deep interest in such forms of aberration as a pathologist may in a case of cancer. And it is difficult to feel any particular wish to change habits which so obviously belong to a bad stock that is hardly worth improving. The best hope is that the unmitigated results of such mental disease may quickly have full effect on the type, and result in its extermination before a better class or better race. So far as cure is possible, the most hopeful direction is by an increase of useful and beneficial interests, which will make such vapid and senseless amusements decay by mere disgust. The distaste for work and craving for amusement extends beyond the above limits in a manner very deleterious to character. It is a feature of a decaying civilisation, as shown on the later Mykenaean frescoes, and the rage for the circus in later Roman times. Besides the waste of time and labour, it acts injuriously in producing a restless incapable type of mind, brought more forward lately in motoring; and also by creating a false social atmosphere, in which the business of life is contemned and treated as a drudgery, instead of being a main subject of interest and emulation. As the shrewd Carl Peters remarks on English society, "Nobody can fail to be struck by its utter recklessness and shallowness," and "an increasing objection to labour is noticeable right through the British nation." These various forms of a low type of character are on the increase, and it does not seem at all likely that they will be checked, except by great disasters which remove the less capable part of the population, and compel the rest to adopt a more energetic mode of life.