One of the causes of that popular discontent which brought about the
stupendous events resulting in the disruption of the great republic,
historians and archæologists are agreed in reckoning "insurance." Of the
exact nature of that factor in the problem of the national life of that
distant day we are imperfectly informed; many of its details have perished
from the record, yet its outlines loom large through the mist of ages and
can be traced with greater precision than is possible in many more
important matters.

In the monumental work of Professor Golunk-Dorsto ("Some Account of the
Insurance Delusion in Ancient America") we have its most considerable
modern exposition; and Gakler's well-known volume, "The Follies of
Antiquity," contains much interesting matter relating to it. From these
and other sources the student of human unreason can reconstruct that
astounding fallacy of insurance as, from three joints of its tail, the
great naturalist Bogramus restored the ancient elephant, from hoof to
horn.

The game of insurance, as practiced by the ancient Americans (and, as
Gakler conjectures, by some of the tribesmen of Europe), was gambling,
pure and simple, despite the sentimental character that its proponents
sought to impress upon some forms of it for the greater prosperity of
their dealings with its dupes. Essentially, it was a bet between the
insurer and the insured. The number of ways in which the wager was
made--all devised by the insurer--was almost infinite, but in none of them
was there a departure from the intrinsic nature of the transaction as seen
in its simplest, frankest form, which we shall here expound.

To those unlearned in the economical institutions of antiquity it is
necessary to explain that in ancient America, long prior to the disastrous