has its own government, while the secretaries, the library, and the valuable collections are common to the five. The Duke d'Aumale in 1886 gave to the institute his château and Chantilly together with his wonderful art collection and library. This is the most treasured possession of the Institute. Members are elected by ballot and there are active, honorary, corresponding, foreign associates. The meeting-place of the Institute is the Mazarin Palace, opposite the Louvre.
INSTITUTION, in civil law, the appointment of a debtor as heir of a testator. Also a Christian educational establishment, with a school and college department, for teaching young Hindus and Mohammedans the religion and science of the West, chiefly through the medium of the English tongue. Chiefly Anglo-Indian.
INSTRUMENT, in law, a document or writing, as the means of giving formal expression to an act; a writing expressive of some act, contract, process, or proceeding, as a deed, a contract, a writ, etc. In music, any mechanical contrivance for the production of sound. The musical instruments employed are divided into the following classes: Stringed; wind; and pulsatile. The first and second class require no description. The pulsatile or percussion instruments are the kettle-drums, great drum, side drum, triangle, cymbals, and tambourine.
INSTRUMENTATION, the art of using, in composition, the various instruments and combinations of the Orchestra (q. v.).
INSUFFLATION, in the Roman Catholic Church, the breathing, by the priest administering baptism, into the face of the recipient of the sacrament, to signify the new spiritual life which is to be breathed into his soul.
INSULATOR, in electricity, a nonconductor of electricity so placed as to insulate a body. In thermotics, a nonconductor of heat placed so as to prevent the passage of heat to or from a body.
INSURANCE, the act of insuring or assuring against damage or loss; a contract by which a company, in consideration of a sum of money paid, technically called a premium, becomes bound to indemnify the insured or his representatives against loss by certain risks, as fire, shipwreck, etc.
While every known form of insurance is carried on in the United States, there is no general law governing the conduct of the business. Till about 1856, the various companies in each branch of the business carried on their operations according to the principles that prevailed in England, with such modifications as American business methods and interests made necessary. Massachusetts was the first State to insist upon an official supervision of all insurance business transacted within its limits by companies chartered there and elsewhere. The establishment of a State insurance department there, in which was vested the entire control of all insurance business in the State, and the enactment of special laws for the management of the companies, placed the business on a firmer footing than it previously had. In 1859 New York followed the example of Massachusetts, and since then nearly every other State has created an insurance department.
Life Insurance.—In the United States the companies are distinguished as stock or proprietary, mutual, and mixed as to organization, and level premium, natural premium, and assessment as to system of operation. A stock company is one organized on the cash capital subscribed by its projectors. The capital is held as a pledge for the payment of policy holders' claims while premiums are accumulating, and as the liability is limited to the aggregate amount of policies in force it is necessary to provide only a sum sufficient to meet these liabilities. No policy holder has any voice in the management of the company, nor any share in the profits of its business. A mutual company is one constituted by persons who are themselves insured, who corporately insure others, and who as policy holders control the management by electing directors from among themselves, and receive in various forms the annual profits. As these companies are organized without any capital, it is necessary that they should accumulate more quickly than stock companies a fund to meet liabilities; hence they charge premium rates in excess of the amount that will really effect the insurance, viz., a reserve element, a mortality element (together constituting the net premium), and the “loading” or expense element, which is an addition to the real cost of insurance to provide for operating expenses and an occasional excess of mortuary loss.
A form of insurance that has attained wide popularity in the United States is known as co-operative. Among the first if not the very first organization to adopt this form was the order of Free-masonry. The rate of admission was graded by age, assessments of $1 or $1.10 were levied whenever a death occurred, and the beneficiary of a member received $1 for each
