pests is less essential than the destruction of breeding-grounds and the prohibition of infected materials. What is the economic effect of gambling? In James's vivid and terse

phrase, what is its "cash value" to the community?

1. It is detrimental to sport, its happy hunting-ground. The emergence of financial interests in physical contests is a serious menace to our modern substitute for war-viz., sport. It creates a crowd of most unsporting parasites, who are a drug in the economic, social and ethical market.

2. It is bad for business. Engrossment in betting and lotteries is a distraction from the interests of employers and employees. Thefts and embezzlements are usually consequential upon transactions of hazardry.

Laziness and inepti"The Dignity of

3. It is the antithesis of industry. tude settle like a pall upon the gambler. Labour" ceases to apply to those who are inured to wait for the lucky win. A non-productive horde who serve no public interest whatsoever grow up like weeds in the community where gambling is rife.

4. It is opposed to the ideals of education and culture. It unsettles the attention and the will. The widespread sale of "Golden Casket" tickets and the periodical publication of lists of horses and of the winners of prizes tend to divert the minds of the young from study and preparation for a life's vocation. The values of toil and of time are disregarded as obsolete in view of the possible and spasmodic movements of the hand on the dial of fortune. The lottery is the trainingground for the race-course and the betting shop, and is a deterrent from sustained and patient labour with brain or sinew.

5. It is an abettor of crime and immorality. In public affairs hypocrisy is engendered by the patronage of gambling in the form of lotteries and sweepstakes. The raids on betting shops and Chinese gamblers are inconsistent with the encouragement of the sale of lottery tickets. The same

pernicious spirit of make-believe is created by the plea that the appeal to chance is justified in the interests of philanthropy. The low ethical standard of the permission of evil for a supposedly good end is inculcated by these practices. It is suicidal to sacrifice character even for the maintenance of hospitals, when there are other ways of securing those ends, for instance, by direct taxation if need be, rather than by teaching the young to gamble.

The criminal records prove how great is the moral and social evil brought about as the result of gambling. The devices to get suddenly rich without effort or ability are ruinous to the character of the citizens. The ideal of honesty

and solvency are forfeited by the wild and unprofitable speculations of the race-course, and many a career of crime is thus begun.

How is this vice to be curbed? How are the life interests of so many of our gamblers to be re-adjusted? Merely destructive and denunciatory criticism is futile. There must be a positive and educational development in Australia to combat the barrenness of mind indicated by the love of hazardry. The public-house must give place to institution more worthy of the twentieth century. All true education is a remedy for the evils of vacuity. There is a paucity and an impotence about the national interests and values when so many can employ themselves to no better purpose than in the artificial excitements of cupidity dependent upon the vagaries of Luck. It is a national condemnation, and a challenge to idealism that we are like to degenerate into a nation of gamblers.

The devotee of the

Art is the ally of true education. beautiful will live a fuller, richer life than the captive to the lures of chance. Our standards of taste are still deplorably low, especially in the congested areas of cities and in the remote towns and villages of our vast demesne. The love of music is a power for progress in our community. Even the pianola and the gramophone may serve high ends in raising the standard of recreation. The use of wireless for the dissemination of music in remote parts of the country would regenerate the recreational life of the dwellers in the "never-never." Our finest concerts could be broadcasted by this instrument over wide areas. If better music were heard and loved throughout the length and breadth of the land, people would not waste their evenings over interminable card-parties and banal forms of excitement. The pictureshow may become an uplifting force. It has helped to supply colour and variety in many lives spent in monotony and drudgery. But we need better pictures with better plots and better advertisements if the standard of recreation is to be raised. The educational and recreational value of the film has scarcely been estimated or attempted as yet. Our universities, scientific societies (e.g., the Royal, Royal Geographical, and Australasian Association) might disseminate much popular educational matter through the cinema.

All such more or less indirect modes of combating the tendencies to absorption in the lower forms of social life are subsidiary to the frontal attacks by the forces of legislation and of religion. Parliament must set the example by linking

up ethics and politics. The transport of all mail-matter connected with "Tattersalls" and other sweepstakes should be disallowed by the Federal authorities. The prohibition of "Tattersalls" should be extended to Tasmania, the one State which shelters this disturber of progress. Publication of betting odds and information connected with gambling should be prohibited, throughout the Commonwealth. The newly-elected members of the Federal Parliament have an opportunity to do something to aid in the fuller development of a moral and civic spirit among our young Australians. State Lotteries and "Art-unions" should be suppressed, instead of being patronised, as at present in Queensland, and probably elsewhere in the States. The "Art-union" is a complete misnomer. It was originally intended to assist artists in disposing of their work by the method of a raffle. It has degenerated into a mode of raising money for all sorts of purposes. An inspection of the balance-sheets for many of these "Art-unions" would be interesting. The amount allotted to "expenses" is in many instances quite out of proportion to the "proceeds" in support of the much advertised object of charity or public benefit. The whole business has grown enormously, and is now a scandal to the national character and a menace to our future. The "Crown" which raids and prosecutes gamblers in bettingshops with righteous, if spasmodic, zeal to-day, is to-morrow and all the time promoting lotteries and permitting "Artunions" which are producing an annual crop of young gamblers in the community. Let us be consistent-or as nearly so as possible-in this matter.

The education of our people is founded upon a religious basis. The close relationship with the ideal in life comes primarily through religion. The filling of the empty heart with worthy interests is accomplished mainly by a vital and ethical faith. The churches are commonly, and sometimes unfairly, regarded as the sole custodians of morality. It is a scandal that all the churches have not been scrupulous in regard to the modes of raising money. The churches must have clean hands in the matter of gambling if they are to inculcate that love of righteousness which exalts a nation. There has, however, been a searching of conscience in this connection, and the ideals of national life are being more earnestly examined and proportionately refined. If gambling is to decline through the creation of greater popular interest in weightier and nobler matters, it will be through a closer alliance of religion, ethics, education, art and civics, and a consequent advance in the supreme art of life.

59

FROM THE EDITOR'S CHAIR.

Philosophical Journal is always an adventurous, and rarely a remunerative undertaking. The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy runs a special risk, for it addresses two audiences, and may fail to satisfy both. Some of the articles are on subjects of technical interest, written by experts for experts, or for a limited number of professional students. Other articles will treat of topics of universal interest, ranging from the high metaphysical quest of the secret of the Absolute, to concrete problems of social and political ethics. The Journal will not be the organ of any particular school of philosophical thought. It will not be made the vehicle for any kind of propaganda. It will not scorn the old fogey in Philosophy, or disdain the new faddist, although it may criticise both. In England and America, the technical and the humanistic or universal interests are represented by many different types of scientific and philosophical Journals. In Australia and New Zealand, until specialisation shall have increased with greater differentiation of studies, and until increase of population shall have brought with it a greater body of cultured opinion, interested in the things of the spirit, one Journal must attempt the double task. In doing so, it runs, as we have said, a double risk. It may be too general to satisfy the few. It may be too technical to interest the many. But unless it undertook the twofold task, it would not survive the year. The small band of promoters accept the risk, in the hope that sufficient initial support may be received from Australasian students of Psychology and Philosophy to justify the adventure.

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Between the uneducated and the educated public, there is the greatest public of all in the democratic state, the halfeducated public, not Ibsen's damned compact majority, but an amorphous mass of instincts and interests, hopes and fears, prejudices masquerading as principles. It constitutes perhaps the greatest difficulty and danger of modern democracy, although under ordinary conditions, the danger is diminished through the restraining and guiding influence of a free and enlightened public press. Ruskin, in one of his many reckless utterances, dismissed the newspaper press as so many leagues of dirtily printed falsehood. But neglecting certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, the public press of to-day represents for the most part, a great and honourable company of distributors of knowledge, who have a sincere love for what is honest and true and of good report, and an unselfish desire

to promote the welfare and enlightenment of society. Το this honourable company we would join ourselves, for, in spite of division of labour and diversity of function and gifts, we all belong to the great working army of middlemen, through whose labour the thoughts and achievements of the few become the common and permanent possession of the many.

The modern democratic community is safeguarded from the worst results of extravagances and extremes, (the extravagances and extremes themselves we shall always have with us) partly as we have noted, by the existence of a free press, and freedom of public discussion, through which absurdities and errors neutralise if they do not cancel each other; and partly by the existence of a kind of court of appeal, constituted by a cultured minority of trained minds and liberal spirits. There is no visible seat of authority. Disputes and differences of opinion may abound. But in every department of thought and life, there are always the men who know, and in matters of knowledge at least, sooner or later the still small voice of the man who knows may be trusted to overcome the loud, blatant utterances of dogmatic authority, appeals to ignorance and superstition, prejudice and fear.

In matters that directly affect practical life or economic well-being, men can generally apply scientific methods of observation, induction and deduction. They can test and verify assertions and theories, without being acquainted with technical rules and canons, as formulated by a logic of scientific method. Common sense, which is simply the spontaneous working of reason in dealing with the ways and means and ends of ordinary life, can generally be trusted to take care of itself. Only when common sense attempts to explain its own explanations, does it require to be taken of, for then it takes the field as an uncritical science and philosophy, and as a result is found very often on the wrong side of the line separating sense from nonsense.

On questions that turn on what is called truth of fact, the actual nature and constitution of things and the causal order of events, there is no permanent or final authority save the truth itself, and that means simply its power to prove itself true when tested by the ever-widening knowledge and growing experience of mankind, and things being what they are, consequences will be as they will be.

But men cannot rest content with the actual, or be satisfied by an economic well-being, however rounded and com