SELF DESTRUCTION OF INSURED   461

of a named sum to himself, his executors, administrators or assigns, that the company should be liable if his death was intentionally caused by himself when in sound mind. When the policy is silent as to suicide, it is to be taken that the subject of insurance—that is, the life of the assured—shall not be intentionally and directly, with whatever motive, destroyed by him when in sound mind. To hold otherwise is to say that the occurrence of the event upon the happening of which the company undertook to pay was intended to be left to his option. This view is against the very essence of the contract."

The conclusion stated is a plain non sequitur. Suicide is only one of many ways that may determine the event of death. Insurance rates are based upon an average expectancy of life, derived from experience tables embracing suicide as well as all other causes of mortality. Many intelligent persons believe that suicide self-evinces a morbid state of mind, and insurers, in a large volume of business, may well offset the natural love of life against the in-frequent impulse of self-destruction. The supposed analogy to other insurance is not new. In Moore v. Woolsey, 4 El. & B. 212, 254, Lord Campbell said, obiter: "If a man insures his life for a year and commits suicide within the year, his executors cannot recover on a policy, as the owner of a ship who insures her for a year cannot recover on the policy if, within the year, he causes her to be sunk." The reasoning is specious and the analogy is false. It is quite right that wilful and unnecessary destruction of the subject of fire or marine insurance should, at the same time, destroy the insurer's liability. The courts, therefore, imply in such case an exception from the general terms of the contract, because that must have been intended. But the case of life insurance is not parallel. Strict insurance is indemnity. Voluntary and unnecessary destruction of the property insured is inconsistent with the basis of the contract; but the basis of that which, by a misnomer, is called insurance upon life is altogether different. That is an arbitrary agreement to pay a fixed sum upon the happening of an inevitable event, to wit, the death of the insured, without regard to the value of his life, or the loss sustained by the assured. That a contract of life insurance is not a contract of indemnity was decided in the Exchequer Chamber in 1S54. Dalby v. India and London Life Assurance Co., 15 C. B. 365, overruling Godsall v. Boldero, 9 East 72. There is no force in any argument derived from contracts of indemnity. Another reason, not expressly stated by Justice Harlan, but frequently assigned in judicial dicta for the implication declared by him, is that, without it, the insured would be deriving a benefit from his own wrongful act which will never be presumed to be within the intention of contracting parties. For example, recovery on a life insurance policy assigned by the insured to his creditor, who afterwards murdered him, has rightfully been denied. New York