e field of
battle. We acknowledge that there is something outside us that is
stronger than we are; of which we are afraid; to which we surrender
ourselves as base and abject slaves.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+There are forces in the world that can destroy us; we must protect
ourselves against them.+--To be truly brave, we must be ready to face
these forces when there is a reason for so doing. We must be ready to
face the cannon for our country; to plunge into the swollen stream to
save the drowning child; to expose ourselves to contagious diseases in
order to nurse the sick.

To do these things without sufficient reason is foolhardiness. To expose
ourselves needlessly to disease; to put ourselves in the range of a
cannon, to jump into the stream, with no worthy end in view, or for the
very shallow reason of showing off how brave we can be, is folly and
madness. Doing such things because someone dares us to do them is not
courage, but cowardice.

+Gambling, the most fatal form of this fondness for taking needless
risks.+--The gambler is too feeble in will, too empty in mind, too
indolent in body to carve out his destiny with his own right hand. And
so he stakes his well-being on the throw of the dice; the turn of a
wheel; or the speed of a horse. This invocation of fortune is a
confession of the man's incompetence and inability to solve the problem
of his life satisfactorily by his own exertions. It is the most
demoralizing of practices. For it establishes the habit of staking
well-being not on one's own honest efforts, but on outside influences
and forces. It is the dethronement of will and the deposition of
manhood.

In addition to being degrading to the individual it is injurious to
others. It is anti-social. It makes one man's gain depend on another's
loss: while the social welfare demands that gains shall in all cases be
mutual. It violates the fundamental law of equivalence.

Since the essence of gambling is the abrogation of the will, every
indulgence weakens the power to resist the temptation. Gambling soon
becomes a mania. Honest ways of earning money seem slow and dull. And
the habit becomes confirmed before the victim is aware of the power over
him that it has gained. Every form of gain which is contingent upon
another's loss partakes of the nature of gambling. Raffling, playing for
stakes, betting, buying lottery tickets, speculation in which there is
no real transfer of goods, but mere winning or losin