The gambling proclivity is doubtfully to be classed as a feature
belonging exclusively to the predatory type of human nature. The
chief factor in the gambling habit is the belief in luck; and
this belief is apparently traceable, at least in its elements, to
a stage in human evolution antedating the predatory culture. It
may well have been under the predatory culture that the belief in
luck was developed into the form in which it is present, as the
chief element of the gambling proclivity, in the sporting
temperament. It probably owes the specific form under which it
occurs in the modern culture to the predatory discipline. But the
belief in luck is in substance a habit of more ancient date than
the predatory culture. It is one form of the artistic
apprehension of things. The belief seems to be a trait carried
over in substance from an earlier phase into the barbarian
culture, and transmuted and transmitted through that culture to a
later stage of human development under a specific form imposed by
the predatory discipline. But in any case, it is to be taken as
an archaic trait, inherited from a more or less remote past, more
or less incompatible with the requirements of the modern
industrial process, and more or less of a hindrance to the
fullest efficiency of the collective economic life of the
present.
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