The Play of Man

by Karl Groos

Another of the earliest of the manifold forms of chance games is the casting of lots. New Zealand wizards decide the fortunes of war by throwing staffs. If the stick which represents their own tribe falls on that of another, then a favourable outcome may be confidently expected to the battle. The Zulus have a similar ceremony, and the Hindus cast lots before the temple and supplicate the gods for victory. In the Iliad the crowd prayed with outstretched hands while the dice in Agamemnon’s helmet decided who should be the first to fight Hector. Tacitus tells us that the German priests tossed three dice on a white cloth before they attempted to reveal the future.[424] The origin, then, of the use of dice in games of chance is indubitable. The ancient form of backgammon common in India and Mexico was played with lots instead of dice, as was also the case with the Arabian Tâb. Some Indian tribes use the simple casting of lots for gambling purposes. The Arabian does not throw, but draws lots as a substitute for the Meisir forbidden in the Koran.[425] The complicated Chinese game lotto is well known, and Bastian found a similar one used in Siam.[426] E. von Hartmann refers repeatedly in his Tagesfragen to our European lottery, combating the popular idea that it is reprehensible, and should not be fostered by the state. He sees in a well-conducted state lottery the best means of directing the ineradicable tendency to play games of chance into harmless channels. Money speculation is, as a rule, little different from a lottery, since the great majority of speculators have no more intimation of the outcome than is furnished by the law of probabilities which governs pure games of chance. Returning now to simpler manifestations, we find many which are closely related to the use of lots. North American Indians, who are zealous gamblers, use marked or coloured stones, seeds, and teeth, and stake their clothing, furniture, weapons, and, in fact, all that they possess. In Burmah a favourite game is played with beans, and in many of the villages a thrashing floor is erected for the express purpose of supplying the demand.[427] In Siam the children play with shells, and everything depends on whether the opening falls up or down.[428] A similar game was known to the Greeks, and in Rome a coin was tossed with the cry, “Caput aut navis!” equal to our “Heads or tails!” We must suppose that such play by children is derived from adult games of chance.

Astragalus and dice were the implements used in many such games. The former are peculiarly shaped bones from the ankles of sheep, goats, or calves, and their use for such purposes is very ancient. They are capable of resting on any one of four sides which may vary in value, as the six sides of dice. The Schliemann collection in the Berlin Museum contains some of them which were found in the “second city.” In ancient Greece four astragali were used in the games of adults, and were thrown either from the free hand or from a cup. Special names were given to the various throws, such as Aphrodite, Midas, Solon, Euripides, etc., and the worst throw was called, there as in Rome, the dog. The children of antiquity also played with these bones a game partly of chance and partly of skill, and Hellenic children use them to this day. Ulrichs saw them at Arachola on Parnassus. “The children there,” he says, “play with the astragalus, which is a small four-sided bone rounded at the end and so shaped as to be capable of resting on any of its sides. In the game the uppermost side is read, the commonest throw being that which brings the round end up and is called the baker or the donkey. Then follow the thief, the vizier, and, rarest of all, the king, the side which looks like an ear and is opposite the vizier.”[429]

The name vizier seems to point to Mohammedan influence, and indeed the children of Damascus have a special game of chance with astragalus in which the terms vizier and thief are both used.[430] Some think that ordinary dice are derived from the astragalus, but it would be difficult to prove, though their imitation in other materials seems to suggest it, as in the case of the oblong dice used by the Romans with cubical ones, and several hundred prehistoric dice found in Bohemia are of similar form. The Berlin Museum, too, has oblong dice from India and China, showing that they were widely used in the Orient, and Hyde points out in his history of games of chance that the Greek word κύβος is related to the Arabic Kab, which meant simply made of lamb’s bones. On the other hand, cubical dice with spots like ours are found in Theban graves, so that we can not be positive as to the priority of the astragalus.

Possibly cocoanut rolling was the primitive form of roulette as we have seen it used in half-religious, half-playful manner by the South Sea Islanders. The Berlin Museum has Chinese rolling dice through which a peg passes, projecting on each side or with the peg on one side only, and the ball tapering to a point on the other. According to Egede, Greenlanders have a sort of roulette, an oblong ball about which the players sit with the stake before them.[431] Another form of chance game is the morra, which was probably known to the ancient Egyptians, and was in all likelihood at first a clever method of calculating.[432] As a play the hands of all the players are thrown simultaneously into the air, and each must guess at the number of outstretched fingers without taking time to count. This amusement, still very popular among Italian peasants, was called by the Achæans “micare digitis.” In China, where it is zealously cultivated, it bears the name of “tsoey-moey.”[433] The North American Indians have a modification of it in their cane guessing—namely, the effort to locate a small object passed quickly about in a company. It is used for gambling purposes, the Indians staking all that they have, even to their wives sometimes.[434] The “Kyohzvay” play is taken quite as seriously in Burmah. For this a stick is fixed among the folds of a tightly wrapped cord, and the game is won or lost[435] according as it is or is not successfully concealed.[436] The various games of cards afford by far the most important instances of play with chance, and their name is legion. We have not time even to glance at such games as faro, lansquenet, rouge et noir, trente et quarante, etc., except to say that they all depend on a combination of reason with chance, and so more speedily put an end to suspense as to who is the victor than do purely chance plays. We are now confronted by the difficult question of what it is that constitutes the demoniacal charm of gaming, whose power is demonstrated by the value of the stakes with which a man will tempt Fate. Every one is familiar with Tacitus’s description of the ancient Germans who, when they had lost everything else, staked their freedom and their life on the last throw. H. M. Schuster gives a long list of examples of Germans staking freedom, wife, and children, the clothes on their backs, life itself, yes, even their souls’ salvation when their passion for play was at its height. That this is a universal Aryan trait is shown by the Indian poem of Nala and Damayanti. The former, under the power of a hostile demon, loses at play with Pushkara his ornaments, jewelry, horses, wagons, and clothes. In vain his wife and followers seek to restrain his madness; for many months the ruinous play goes on until Nala has lost all his property and even his kingdom. Then as Pushkara, with loud laughing at the unlucky fellow, cried out that now he must put up his wife Damayanti, Nala rose from the table and walked away with his faithful wife, stripped as he was of all else. The Chinese, Siamese, and Burmese, too, are all passionate gamblers, and the Malays are famous for their wagers on animal fights. This is sufficient to show that the wonderfully strong attractive power of gaming, “le jeu-passion, dont le rôle tragique est vieux comme l’humanité,”[437] is the result of numerous causes whose aggregate, according to Fechner’s principle, is far greater than their numerical sum. Taking account of the essentials only, we still have a threefold phenomenon; these are, desire to win the stake, the stimulus of strong effects, and the impulse given by the fighting instinct.

Winning the stake is so important that without it games of chance become very flat and most unimpressive, as forms of entertainment. How is this to be explained? Sometimes it appears as veritable cupidity, the “fascination d’acquérir d’un bloc, sans peine, en un instant.”[438] The seductive chink of gold pieces is heard and visions of new names of wealth open before us, promising to deliver us from all burdens and dangers which in spite of their distance and vagueness we strive to get possession of by a single turn of Fortune’s wheel; the gold fever is at home in gambling dens. Yet—and I think this is important—as a rule, it is not mere greed for gain as such, but a feeling more refined. It is boundless delight in sudden good fortune that makes the unearned winnings so enticing. That inward striving after the absolute, which is so deeply rooted in the human breast, is concerned in the longing to experience at least one moment of exhilarating joy with which a single stroke of Fortune’s wand sets our hearts aflame:

“From the clouds it must fall,

Such is the gift of the gods;

And the strongest power of all

Is that which belongs to the moment.”