Gambling, Gambling

I have no need to define gambling. Everyone knows that it is one of the means of illicit gain and illicit loss. Indeed, all of you know that it is one of the causes of ruin and destruction: it wrecks homes, brings shame, and in many cases ends with the gambler in madness or suicide.

And perhaps I am not mistaken if I say that it is a chronic, baneful disease that has spread through the circles of society at all their varying levels, so that a cure for it has become difficult, if not practically impossible.

And although people grasp its dangers and are scorched by its fire, their eagerness for it grows day by day — a thing which has driven governments and the responsible religious authorities to forbid it, or to confine its harms and keep watch over those who ply it.

What compels astonishment is that people take up gambling of their own free choice, knowing what calamities and disasters follow from this act of theirs, and what misery and wretchedness befall them and their kin because of it. Perhaps the reason is that gambling is easy of entrance and light of grasp: in it are abundant elements of temptation and allurement, and in it are many promptings of hope and of hazard.

Weak, idle souls incline to it as well — souls that turn coward in the fields of hard work and fall back before duties.

A class of the rich practices gaming as one of the means of amusement, but before long they sink into its mire, and the matter ends with them in the state in which every gambler ends, be he rich or poor, notable or lowly — I mean the state of misery and abasement, the loss of dignity and health and the rest, which makes a man a despised, feeble member from whom no good is to be hoped.

And therefore I can affirm that the sensible man who guards his reputation and his dignity, his health, his money, and his family holds himself above stooping to the practice of gaming, which is an abomination of Satan's work.

For the gambler's presence in an atmosphere saturated with corruption, among persons who are strangers to him and among ravening wolves that long to tear him to pieces, breeds in him a hatred of himself and of his surroundings, until he sees nothing around him but enemies — until even his wife's smile appears to him as mockery of his loss, and the chirping of his children as though they strove to increase his misery, and the kindness of his friends as a means of gaining their own ends in the hour of his wretchedness. The causes of this distressing state of mind are many; the chief of them:

1 — The decline of the gambler's health: staying up whole long nights, and bending constantly under a feeble light among people of whose health God alone knows the measure, affects the gambler's digestive system and leaves it unable to resist disease; and so his health declines.

2 — The weakening of the gambler's mental apparatus: the factor of sudden gain and the factor of sudden loss come to one and the same result. You see the gambler perplexed, fearful, waiting — now smiling and now scowling, now winning and now losing. The human brain cannot endure these fluctuations, and the end is either madness or early death.

3 — His aversion to the family atmosphere and his hatred of his family: the gambler fancies that his losses are caused by some ill omen in his house, and so family happiness withers away, and nothing is seen or heard but quarreling and fighting. And since the family is the foundation of religion, when family happiness vanishes religion vanishes with it — and oh, the calamity of that house, and its loss!

4 — The destruction of the gambler's spirit: he has no personality and no religion; no respect for him and none from him; no family and no friends; no immunity against disease. Constant fluctuation and perpetual quarreling — what use, then, is he?

As for the ways of guarding against this malignant disease: among them is what governments do by legislating to forbid gambling, closing its clubs, and punishing those who practice it; and among them are preaching and guidance in the houses of God and in the halls of discipline and instruction. But souls hardened in corruption are moved by neither promise nor threat, and their reform is to be hoped for only in rare cases. And nature herself may be the best deterrent to a man from the vices in which he is sunk: the sickness and misery that befall the drunkard, for instance, may bar him from tippling wine, and the bankruptcy, sickness, and misery that befall the gambler may bar him from continuing to gamble.

Therefore the evil must be forestalled before it falls: that is, the utmost care must be given to the affairs of the young, warding dangers off them and forestalling whatever might lure them down into the pits of corruption, by directing their wayward inclinations toward what will profit them and make their condition happy. This is done by giving them a sound upbringing at home and at school; by training their characters to aspire toward the high ideals in which shine forth the lofty morals and excellent qualities that alone can keep a man far from every vice; and by establishing athletic and educative clubs containing every kind of sport and of bodily and mental recreation. For in such institutions the young man finds what his soul longs for; he grows up in a wholesome atmosphere of sport and morals, and goes out into the world strong in body, mind, and character. It is hard for such a youth to be swayed by the temptations and corruptions of the age that he meets in his life, for in him there is a great store of moral immunity.

And what is said of the man is said also of the woman, for this baneful disease has spread among most of the ladies — until it is even said that the lady who does not play is still backward in civilization and refinement!