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by both names—were also guessed too little at first, and the business has suffered from that circumstance to this day.

In all branches of insurance, it has come to be recognized, though in some much earlier than in others, that proper rates of premium are to be found by combining statistics and by applying the laws of average.

Variations of the hazard are found in all the subjects of insurance. Thus the hazard of fire varies with exposures, with occupancies, with the seasons of the year. But in most branches of insurance, there is no force or tendency at work to constantly diminish or increase the risk. In this respect, two forms of insurance, life and health, stand alone. The risk of death is great during the first year of life and then subsides slowly. At about the age of puberty it begins slowly to increase, and this rate of increment itself increases slowly. In extreme old age it becomes no longer a risk but, instead, a certainty. The time lost by disablement, by sickness, tends to vary in a similar manner, also; and, indeed, it is what mathematicians call a "function" of the mortality—that is to say, in some mysterious manner and according to an ill-defined law, the liability to sickness accompanies the liability to death.

Death is a certainty and not a chance. The man would be accounted a fool who put up a stake with third parties that he would never die; for he would be certain to lose. Insurance against death, therefore, so far as insurance against it ever happening is concerned, is plainly seen to be impossible, were not the company the stakeholder, as well as the bettor on one side.

That death will come within a year, for instance, is