LAUSR

1. Trans. note: Like his contemporaries, Lévy-Bruhl assumed male figures for hypothetical individuals and used masculine pronouns for generic persons, even when the context was not restricted specifically to men. Although this is discouraged nowadays (albeit still common), I have reproduced his usage in the translation to avoid ascribing some kind of anachronistic awareness of nonsexist language to him. Hardly any passion is more ancient and more common than gambling; it is as widespread as the use of narcotics and stimulants. It is found almost everywhere and on all levels in the scale of human societies. People in the Far East, especially the Chinese, devote themselves to it with fervor; it is one of their favorite vices. In our societies, card games, dice, roulette, betting on races and other sports, and speculating on the stock market—by no means a complete list!—indicate how deeply gambling is rooted in our own traditions. In this regard, the NewWorld lacks nothing in comparison to the Old. The psychology of the gambler has often been examined by researchers and has tantalized many novelists and dramatists. I have no intention of reviewing their prior analyses and observations here. I only wish to explore briefly whether a close affinity exists between the mentality of the gambler and that of people whom we call, inappropriately enough, “primitives.” To simplify things, I will not consider the various types of gamblers who only engage in the practice intermittently and with a certain detachment, such as those who exercise reason and self-control, for whom risk is an amusement rather than a passion, and who know how to limit their losses at cards, racetracks, or the stock market, similar to others who control their intake of tobacco for health reasons. I will also leave aside games in which skill, reflection, and intellectual and moral qualities play a more prominent role than luck over the long term. I will deal only with pure gamblers, the intrinsic type, those whose passion is so strong that they would rather gamble in the face of almost certain loss than not gamble at all. This type is more or less fully incarnated among the regulars found in gambling halls, at racetracks, within certain cliques at resorts, and so on. In casinos where a large number of these frenzied gam-