The chief factor in the gambling habit is the belief in luck; and this belief is apparently traceable, at least in its elements, to a stage in human evolution antedating the predatory culture.

It may well have been under the predatory culture that the belief in luck was developed into the form in which it is present, as the chief element of the gambling proclivity, in the sporting temperament.

It probably owes the specific form under which it occurs in the modern culture to the predatory discipline.

But the belief in luck is in substance a habit of more ancient date than the predatory culture.

It is one form of the artistic apprehension of things.