Their aversion to every sort of employment which they hold to be mean,
makes them pass great part of their time in idleness or sleep; and a man
who, in pursuit of a wild beast, or to surprise his enemy, will traverse a
hundred leagues on snow, will not, to procure his food, submit to any
species of ordinary labour. "Strange," says Tacitus, "that the same person
should be so much averse to repose, and so much addicted to sloth."
[Footnote: Mira diversitas naturae, ut idem homines sic ament intertiam et
oderint quietem.] Games of hazard are not the invention of polished ages;
men of curiosity have looked for their origin in vain, among the monuments
of an obscure antiquity; and it is probable that they belonged to times too
remote and too rude even for the conjectures of antiquarians to reach. The
very savage brings his furs, his utensils, and his beads, to the hazard
table: he finds here the passions and agitations which the applications of
a tedious industry could not excite; and while the throw is depending, he
tears his hair, and beats his breast, with a rage which the more
accomplished gamester has sometimes learned to repress: he often quits the
party naked and stripped of all his possessions; or where slavery is in
use, stakes his freedom to have one chance more to recover his former loss.
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