The various kinds of life insurance policies have been thus described by a recent writer:7.

"The kinds of life policies are limited in number only by the ingenuity of the actuaries and managers of the numerous competing companies, insuring against the loss of life, and only the more important and usual kinds may be mentioned. The oldest and most frequent form, even at the present time, is known as the 'regular life,' under the terms of which the insured is required to pay a certain fixed premium annually throughout life, and the beneficiary is entitled to receive payment under the policy only upon the death of the insured.

"Another kind of policy which, from the time of its invention by Lorenzo Tonti, an Italian, in 1650, has always proved exceedingly attractive is the 'tontine.' The original tontine contract was for the purpose of securing government loans on advantageous terms from the people, and was based upon a division of the lenders into classes, only the survivors of which were at any given period to participate in the payment of the dividends or principal. This, in its simple form, is seen to be the reverse in many respects of the ordinary contract of life insurance, under which it is to the interest of the insurer that the insured should survive the making of the contract long enough to pay in the premiums an amount equal to, or in excess of the sum received by the beneficiaries under the policy. Under the tontine contract, however, death before the dividend period entirely deprived the decedent, or his nominee, of any benefits from the contract whatever, but the interest of all dying would pass to the survivors, so that the last survivor of any class would receive the dividends that originally accrued to the whole class, and, if the terms of the contract so provided, might also receive the entire principal sum of the loan. A great many of the modern life insurance policies contain tontine features, more or less modified to suit the desires of the insured. Thus, in many endowment policies, it is provided that dividends shall be apportioned to all policies subsisting after a certain period, whether five, ten or twenty years. Under such contracts, those policies maturing or lapsing prior to the expiration of the dividend period receive no dividends, but those still in force at the end of the tontine period receive the benefit, by way of increased dividends, of the maturing or the cancellation of other policies.

7 Vance on Insurance, Secs. 14-15.

"As has been stated heretofore, the modern life insurance contract is as much a contract of investment as of insurance. In the regular life policies defined above, the insurance feature is given prominence, but there are written many and various kinds of life policies in which the investment feature is paramount.

Such policies are generally called 'endowment policies,' and usually provide that the insured shall pay a certain premium annually for a stated period of years. If the insured dies before the end of the endowment period, the beneficiary receives the amount which is agreed to be paid in the policy; but if the insured survives the endowment period, he is entitled at its end to receive the amount written in the face of the policy, with any dividends that may be awarded under the authority of the directors of the company from the surplus receipts of the company."