. : 
 
 RfiCTICAL
 
 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY 
 
 A SYNOPTICAL STUDY OF 
 
 The Science of the Hand 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD HERON-ALLEN 
 
 miOR OF " A MANUAL OF CHEIROSOPHY." " THE SCIENCE OF THE HAND," 
 " A DISCOURSE OK CHVROMANC1E," " CODEX CH1ROMANTM5," ETC. 
 
 Explanatory Tlates and diagrams 
 
 ROSAMUND 13RUNEL HORSLEY 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 ($be ftnicftcrbochet 
 1897
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1887, 
 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
 
 To the Memory 
 Of days that are fast, and of hours that have long gone by . 
 
 INSCRIBED 
 
 With the name of a Friend 
 
 Whose gentle hands have turned the last leaf 
 
 Of a book that is ended: 
 
 U Dedicate 
 
 THESE LABOURS OF MINE IN A NEW WORLD 
 
 2049506
 
 &j/ &*;** <^yb 
 
 *ju& 
 
 XT
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Man 
 
 PREFATORY EXCUKSTON 9 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . - . 13 
 
 PART I. HAND SUPERSTITIONS AND CUSTOMS ... 23 
 
 PART II. THE PHYSIOC-UGI OK THE HAND .... 33 
 PART III. ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS: CHEIROG- 
 
 NOMY 45 
 
 PART IV. CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY 86 
 
 5
 
 LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 THE BONES OF THE HAND 39 
 
 II. THE THUMB, THE JOINTS, AND THE LINES IN 
 
 THE HAND 51 
 
 III. THE ELEMENTARY HAND 63 
 
 IV. THE SPATULATE HAND 67 
 
 V. THE CONIC HAND . . 71 
 
 VI. THE SQUARE HAND 75 
 
 VII. THE KNOTTY HAND 79 
 
 VIII. THE POINTED HAND 83 
 
 IX. THE MOUNTS OF THE PALM 93 
 
 X. THE LINES AND MOUNTS 97 
 
 XI. THE LINES AND MOUNTS 101 
 
 XII. AGES UPON THE LINES OF LIFE AND FORTUNE, 107 
 
 XIII. THE LINES HI 
 
 7
 
 PREFATORY EXCURSION. 
 
 THE first lecture that I had the pleasure of giving 
 in the United States was delivered from the notes 
 from which, in turn, this little book has been written, 
 has been written in odd moments saved from the wreck 
 of time, amid the rapids of existence in New York. It 
 is therefore, perhaps, necessary that I should apologize 
 for the manner in which I have dealt with a subject 
 that stands in no need of any apology in itself, and 
 should offer this word of explanation of the style in 
 which this Opusculum has been prepared. In revising 
 the transcript of the stenographic notes which I caused 
 to be taken of that lecture, I have frequently been 
 astonished at my own temerity in attempting to dis- 
 cuss, within such narrow limits of time and space, a 
 subject so vast as that of The Hand ; were it not that 
 I had pledged myself to the preparation of this per- 
 manent record of the remarks I was enabled by the 
 time at my disposal to make, I should more than 
 once have laid down my pen in despair. 
 
 9
 
 IO PREFATORY EXCURSION. 
 
 I have done what I could, during the process of 
 revision, to give to my work the semblance, at any 
 rate, of a completeness which it does not, cannot, 
 possess ; but even now, at the moment that the sheets 
 are ready to leave the press, I am overwhelmed by 
 the knowledge of my inability to give completeness 
 even to a sketch of the subject which has been identi- 
 fied with my name in two continents. At the request, 
 therefore, of a number of those who were unable to 
 be present on that occasion, and whom I shall never 
 in deference to a deeply rooted national aversion 
 to twice-told tales be able to address to the same 
 effect in the future, I deliver these sheets to the 
 piinter, " not as a guaranty of good faith, ' but for 
 publication," in the hope that in gratifying a widely 
 expressed curiosity with regard to that lecture, I shall 
 not offend those to whom, like myself, the Science 
 of Cheirosophy is a not un-important branch of the 
 great study of human nature, a branch incapable of 
 being adequately honored between the covers of a 
 " Hand-book " the term being used in the literary 
 and not the Cheirosophic sense. 
 
 I have taken advantage of the " cool reflection " 
 
 * ivhich has followed the delivery of my lecture, to add 
 
 ft few passages, which I would fain have introduced
 
 PREFA TOR Y EXCURSION'. 1 1 
 
 into my discourse, did I not hold it to be a lecturer's 
 duty to his audience, to be as brief as circumstances 
 will permit. I have also utilized the opportunities 
 thus offered me, to append a fairly complete system of 
 notes, which may help those of my readers who feel a 
 sufficient interest in the subject to probe the matters 
 referred to more deeply; and I have further made 
 reference, where it has seemed necessary or advisable, 
 to my larger works on the Science of Cheirosophy, so 
 that this little work may, as it were, serve for an ele- 
 mentary guide to the study of those larger volumes. 
 
 J[ claim the indulgence of the public for this little 
 book on one ground alone : that it may serve as an 
 introduction to the Science, for many whose attention 
 has not hitherto been called to its value as a practical 
 means of diagnosing the characters of our fellow-men. 
 May I hope, that in awakening a new interest in the 
 minds of some of my readers, I have acted for them 
 as pioneer along a path which may lead them who 
 knows ? to a solution of the intricate problem that 
 must so often have perplexed them, I mean them- 
 selves ! 
 
 ED. HERON-ALLEN. 
 
 EVERETT HOUSE, NEW YORK, 
 Jan. 7, 1887.
 
 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE pleasure with which I approach the task 
 which I have undertaken, in attempting to 
 record in this form the remarks I have been 
 privileged to make from the lecture-platform, is 
 sensibly modified by regret, regret that the 
 space at my disposal is far too limited to enable 
 me to write a fractional part of what I should 
 wish to record upon a subject which has been 
 one of intense interest to me in the years that 
 are past, and which is one which touches us all 
 very nearly. The subject, however, has this 
 one great advantage : it stands in no need of 
 any preliminary apology ; its importance is its 
 own introduction ; and I will therefore address 
 myself at once to the subject that we have be- 
 fore us, and call your attention to some points 
 which I trust will interest you in connection 
 with the human Hand. 
 
 '3
 
 14 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 There is, I think, no need for me to lay em- 
 phasis upon the paramount importance of the 
 hand in the human economy. This has been 
 acknowledged ever since Aristotle, in the fourth 
 century before Christ, called it " the organ of 
 the organs," ' the active agent of the passive 
 powers of the entire human system ; and we, in 
 these latter days, shall hardly be prepared to 
 controvert this statement, when we reflect that 
 there exists no human action, and hardly any 
 rite or ceremony, in which the hand is not, if 
 not prime agent, at least an important actor. 
 Look only at the fountain-head of all knowledge, 
 literature: is it not by means of the works 
 of their hands, by their writings, that we are en- 
 abled to hold, as Galen says, 2 converse with all 
 the venerable sages, both of remote antiquity 
 and of the recent past, with all those intellectual 
 heroes who have bequeathed to us in writing 
 the intellectual treasures of their own divine 
 imaginations ? 
 
 We have only to pass from this to the con- 
 templation of the manufactures (which it would 
 be impossible to conceive, were men created 
 without hands), to be brought to this inevitable 
 
 1 IIEPI znnN MORION. Book iv. cap. 9. 
 
 2 De Usu Partium Corporis Humani. Book L cap. i.
 
 INTROD UCTION. 1 5 
 
 conviction : that (to borrow an illustration 
 from Darwin) it is by his hands that man 
 hangs, monkey-like, from the branches of the 
 Tree of Knowledge. 
 
 Not only in writing and in manufactures, but 
 in verbal instruction, in the pulpit, in the senate, 
 and in the drama, the part which is played by 
 the human hand is one, the importance of which 
 has occupied the attention of the highest au 
 thorities in these matters ; and the varied emo- 
 tions, expressions, and significations which may 
 be conveyed by the hands alone have been made 
 the subject not only of celebrated passages in 
 the works of such writers as Quintilian the 
 orator, 3 and Montaigne the essayist, 4 but of 
 entire works upon the movements and gestures 
 of the hands as an aid to oratory. 5 What could 
 be more significant as a practical confirmation 
 of what I say, than the fact that after the 
 murder of Cicero at Caieta, his hands as well 
 as his head were sent to be exposed in the 
 Roman Forum, as the means whereby he had 
 cajoled and deluded the Roman citizens ? 
 
 3 De Institutione Oratorica. Book xi. cap. 3. 
 
 4 Apologie de Raimond Sebond. Book ii. cap. 12. 
 
 5 Sc. J. Bulwer : Chirologia ; or the Naturall Language of the 
 Hand. (London, 1644.)
 
 1 6 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 The ancients were therefore actuated by the 
 keenest reasoning in looking upon the amputa- 
 tion of the hands as the severest punishment 
 which they could inflict upon their enemies ; 6 
 for a man without hands is not even the ninth 
 part of a man. He simply cumbers the earth, so 
 far as any practical utility is concerned : though 
 there have been recorded many instances of 
 curious and minute forms of workmanship, and 
 even the playing of such musical instruments 
 as the violin, being effected by persons who 
 have been either born without hands, or have 
 been deprived of them early in life ; even down 
 to the instance quoted by Sir Charles Bell,' of 
 the Russian beggar born without arms, who, 
 haunting a wood a short distance from Mos- 
 cow, used to murder wayfarers by stunning 
 them with a blow of his head, dragging them 
 into the wood, and despatching them with his 
 teeth. 
 
 Many celebrated men have been one-handed. 
 We know that Nelson lost his right arm at 
 Teneriffe, and Cervantes the use of his left at 
 the battle of Lepanto in 1751 ; but these acci- 
 
 6 Xenophon : 'EAAHNIKON. Book ii. cap. I (31). 
 
 7 The Hand: its Mechanism and Vital Endowments. (London, 
 1832.)
 
 INTRODUCTION. I/ 
 
 dents did not, in the former case, interfere with 
 the talents of Horatio Nelson as Lord High 
 Admiral of the Fleet, nor in the latter prevent 
 the evolution of those heroes of romance 
 Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Still, all such 
 cases must be looked upon as historic excep- 
 tions ; and we come back to the original com- 
 ments of Anaxagoras and of Aristotle, to the 
 effect that man, being the wisest of all animals, 
 has alone, of all animals, been gifted with 
 hands, the instruments of his high intellectual 
 faculties. 8 
 
 To echo my words, I have said that man 
 alone of all animals has hands : that is to say, in 
 no other creature do we find either extremities 
 so perfectly articulated, or mental powers so 
 highly developed ; and commencing at the low- 
 est forms of animal life, and progressing up- 
 wards along the scale of created beings, the 
 eminent natural historian, Milne Edwards, has 
 observed 9 that " the faculties of the mammalia 
 are elevated in proportion as their extremities 
 are the better constructed for prehension and 
 touch." And, to go a step farther, we find an 
 
 " Aristotle and Galen: vide the passages quoted in notes i 
 and 2. 
 
 9 A Manual of Zoology. (London, 1863.) 306-343.
 
 IS PRACTICAL CIIE1ROSOPHY. 
 
 ascending scale of intelligence among the ani- 
 mals which are gifted with the nearest approach 
 to, and best substitutes for, hands ; as in the 
 case of the elephant, an instance which has 
 been cited both by Lucretius and by Cicero. 10 
 
 Sir Richard Owen, in a most interesting little 
 book "On the Nature of Limbs,"" has traced 
 step by step the homologies between the human 
 hand and the paws of the brute creation, with 
 the effect of demonstrating that the third rin- 
 ger is the one digit that no animal is without, 
 and that as the extremities become less and 
 less articulated, that is to say jointed, so as to 
 be capable of varied movement, it is the outer 
 fingers which we discover by comparative anat- 
 omy to be missing, and it is the third or middle 
 finger that represents in man the hoof of the 
 horse, and of such animals. 
 
 To man, then, and to man alone, is the per- 
 fect construction of the hand, as we see it, 
 peculiarly adapted ; and it is to man alone with 
 his varied mental and physical requirements, 
 that, as Galen remarked, the Creator has given, 
 in lieu of every other natural weapon or organ 
 
 10 Lucretius : De Rerum Natura. Book ii. line 536. Cicero : De 
 Natura Deorum. Book ii. s. 123. 
 
 11 London, 1849. p. 29.
 
 INTRO D UCTION. 1 9 
 
 of defence, that exquisite and universally en- 
 dowed instrument, THE HAND. 
 
 We know, that as different orders of created 
 beings have differently constructed extremities, 
 so various races of men, even various nations 
 of the same race, show marked varieties of 
 characteristic in the shapes of their hands. It 
 is my intention to carry the question farther 
 still, and to put before you the data upon which 
 I have formed my unalterable conviction that 
 not only do these clearly marked diversities of 
 characteristic occur between the hands of races 
 and of nations, but that in every community 
 of men and women certain physical and men- 
 tal characteristics are clearly signified by cer- 
 tain concomitant peculiarities in the formation 
 of the hands ; and that by observing these 
 characteristics of the hands, we may read off 
 those characteristics of the mind, by means 
 of the simple and physical science of CHF.J- 
 ROSOPHY. 
 
 We are most of us prepared to admit, from 
 the sculptor's point of view, the grandeur and 
 beauty of a large and finely modelled male 
 hand ; but there are very few of us who do 
 not confess in our hearts a preference for the 
 smooth and small and gently moulded hand that
 
 20 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 characterizes for us, what has been called justly 
 the softer, and unjustly the weaker, sex, favor- 
 ably contrasting such hands with the rough and 
 red fist, which, according to Sir Philip Sidney, I2 
 indicates "robust health, a warm heart, and 
 distance from the metropolis," or, according to 
 Don Quixote, great strength.' 3 It is interesting 
 to note, that some of the keenest and cleverest 
 men that history has known have been re- 
 nowned for the elegance, the womanliness, of 
 their hands. Among such I may quote the 
 great Sultan Mahmoud II., Lord Byron, and 
 Pope Leo X. 
 
 In Persia, the hawthorn blossom is called the 
 "white hand of Moses," I4 and "the white hand" 
 is always looked upon as the symbol of inno- 
 cence and of gratitude ; ' 5 whence, conversely, 
 our expression, "red-handed," as the synonym 
 of guilt. I shall have something to say later 
 on about the importance attached to the hand 
 among Oriental nations, at present I have said 
 
 12 Vide Ed. Heron-Allen: The Science of the Hand. (London, 
 1886.) f 10. 
 
 13 Don Quixote : Part ii. chap. 23. 
 
 14 Rubaiyat of Omar-i-Khayyam. Nicolas' text and translation 
 (Paris, 1867), i86th quatrain. Fitzgerald's translation (Boston, 1886) 
 fourth verse. 
 
 ls Arabian Nights (Burton), vol. iv. p. 185. Ed. Heron-Allen: 
 The Science of the Hand, ^ n.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 enough to serve as an introduction to a con- 
 sideration of the bases upon which a complete 
 science of shall I call it divination ? has 
 been raised, having the Human Hand as its 
 point of departure. 
 
 Indeed, indeed, have I not some right to 
 claim a hearing for the science of cheirosophy ? 
 The labors of Johann Kaspar Lavater have cul- 
 minated in the establishment of the science of 
 physiognomy. 16 The untiring researches and 
 efforts of Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Kaspar 
 Spurzheim ' 7 have secured a place among the 
 sciences of to-day for that of phrenology. Now, 
 I claim your attention for a space whilst I bring 
 before you a science many centuries older than 
 either of these, a science which I trust I shall 
 be able to prove to you to be more easy in ap- 
 plication, more simple in acquisition, and more 
 certain in its results, than either or both. 
 
 I am not going to bore you with theories. I 
 have done that enthusiastically in my two larger 
 works on the hand.' 8 I ask your attention now 
 
 16 J. K. Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beforderung 
 der Menschenkenntriss und Menschenliebe (Leipzig, 1775-78). 
 
 17 F. J. Gall : Anatomic et Physiologic du systeme nerveux, et du 
 cerveau en particulier (Paris, 1809-19). 
 
 18 Ed. Heron-Allen: A Manual of Cheirosophy (London, 1885). 
 The Science of the Hand (London, 1886). New York : G. P. Put- 
 nam's Sons, 27 West z^d St.
 
 22 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 to a few notes upon the hand, which I trust 
 will interest you as much as they have inter- 
 ested me, and to a short exposition of the actual 
 principles and practice of my science, which 
 may help you to understand the strange prob- 
 lems which must often have perplexed you, 
 namely, yourselves.
 
 HAND SUPERSTITIONS AND CUSTOMS. 2$ 
 
 PART I. 
 
 HAND SUPERSTITIONS AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 I HAVE, before this, had occasion to say that 
 I believe there exists no symbolical action, 
 adopted by the human race, in which the hand 
 does not play a or THE principal part. In 
 proof of this, let us revert to simplicity. 
 
 How many times a day do we shake hands 
 with our friends ! Sometimes this action is 
 quite mechanical and meaningless ; sometimes 
 it is quite the reverse : but, however we perform 
 the ceremony, I do not think there are many of 
 us who remember that people only go through 
 it with one another to emphasize the fact that 
 they are not concealing a weapon wherewith to 
 surreptitiously murder the person with whom 
 they are shaking hands. Yet such was the 
 origin of hand-shaking. Now, indeed, that the 
 custom has become, as I say, mechanical and 
 universal, it is quite a study by itself, the 
 various methods in which people go through 
 this ceremony, from the dreaded individual who
 
 24 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 shakes hands with you "like that" (as Gilbert 
 says), to the haughty person of whom the poet 
 has written, 
 
 " With finger-tips he condescends 
 To touch the fingers of his friends, 
 As if he feared their palms might brand 
 Some moral stigma on his hand ! " 
 
 Closely allied to this, is the custom, which 
 obtained among the nations of classical anti- 
 quity, and which, indeed, still exists among sav- 
 age tribes, of holding up the hands as a sign of 
 peace before coming to close quarters for the 
 purposes of palaver ; and among modern civil- 
 ized nations, those of us who know the lonely 
 moor districts of England, and the still more 
 lonely prairie roads of North America, may per- 
 haps have been disconcerted by the sudden 
 direction, " Hold up your hands ! " from the 
 mouth of the casual footpad : the signification 
 in each case being to demonstrate the fact that 
 the person so placed is unarmed, or at any rate 
 powerless to resist. 
 
 Following the like analogy, the abrogation 
 of all power, and the consequent supplication 
 for mercy, we have the custom of folding the 
 hands in prayer, a custom which has prevailed
 
 HAND SUPERSTITIONS AND CUSTOMS. 2$ 
 
 since the earliest historic times ; ' 9 and allied 
 with this is the Oriental rule which ordains 
 that the hands shall be hidden in the presence 
 of a superior, by crossing the arms, or by hid- 
 ing the hands in a fold of the robe. So, again, 
 in giving the hand, as the bride does in the 
 marriage ceremony, or as the vassals did to their 
 lords in the mediaeval ceremony of the homage, 
 the like abrogation of will is intended to be 
 symbolized. From this we get to the kissing 
 of hands perhaps the most abject expression 
 of humility that is known to civilization, 20 being 
 reserved solely for princes and fair women, to 
 whom in this manner we signalize our allegiance 
 and submission. Of course I do not overlook 
 the kissing of the priest's hands in the celebra- 
 tions of the Roman-Catholic Church, but this is 
 more a matter of ritual than of personal homage 
 from man to man. 2 ' It is said that the practice 
 of kissing one's hands to people, by way of salu- 
 tation, is a relic of the Parsee fire-worship ; the 
 ancient Persian custom being to place the hand 
 upon the mouth, and raise it towards the sun. 22 
 
 J 9 Aristotle: Ilepi KOO-/IOV: Ke< Z*. 
 
 20 Ed. Heron-Allen : A Manual of Cheirosophy. Iffi 18, 19. 
 
 21 F. Rous : Archeologicae Atticae (London, 1685), p. 278. 
 
 22 J. Brand: Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. Hazlitt's edi- 
 tion (London, 1870).
 
 26 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 These instances are sufficient to point the 
 fact that the hand is more or less universally re- 
 garded as a symbol of power. To such a point 
 is this carried by the Moslem races, that in 
 Morocco even the number five is never men- 
 tioned in the presence of the Emperor, and the 
 fingers of the hand represent a rosary of the 
 five precepts of Islam ; viz., "Belief in Allah and 
 in Muhammad his prophet," "Prayer," "Alms- 
 giving," "The holy pilgrimage to Mecca," and 
 "The Fast of Ramadan." 
 
 Again, we find traces of the same recognition 
 in a thousand different words and phrases bring- 
 ing in the word "hand," in its Latin, Greek, or 
 English forms, with the signification of power 
 or initiative force. 23 Thus we have many such 
 lines in Shakspeare, as, " He is a tall man of 
 his hands;" and in Bacon, as, "At an even 
 hand" signifying equality. 
 
 Nothing was more common, at one time, than 
 the oath by the hand, which was either held up, 
 as is still the custom in Scotch and French 
 courts of law, or laid upon the altar or Bible ; 
 customs which bring us to the various religious 
 rites, such as the laying-on of hands in the 
 consecration of priests, and in the confirmation 
 
 23 A Manual of Cheirosophy. Tflf 14, 15.
 
 HAND SUPERSTITIONS AND CUSTOMS. 2/ 
 
 service. The episcopal blessing, which is given 
 with the thumb and first two fingers only ex- 
 tended, is most interesting to us ; for its signifi- 
 cation is thus laid down in works upon the 
 ritual. 2 * The thumb is the representative of 
 Unity in the Godhead the cross, by the by, 
 in baptism is directed to be traced upon the 
 child's forehead with the thumb ; the first fin- 
 ger is the emblem of Christ, the indicator of 
 God's will, and its revealer to mankind. So, 
 too, the first finger was held by the older chei- 
 romants to be the representative of Jupiter. 
 The second finger represents, in the ritual, the 
 Holy Ghost. So that the three digits held thus 
 represent the Trinity, which is invoked in the 
 blessing. The ring in the marriage-service is 
 placed upon the third finger, in token that after 
 the Trinity the man's eternal allegiance is given 
 to his wife, the ring being the symbol of eter- 
 nity. In the old marriage service, the ring 
 used to be placed on the thumb and the first 
 two fingers in turn, and then left upon the 
 third finger of the woman's hand. This also is, 
 of course, the origin of the position of the fingers 
 in the little coral or metal hands worn in the 
 
 24 Gulielmus Durandus: Rationale Divinorura Officiorum (Ven- 
 ice, 1589), p. 140, verso.
 
 28 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 south of Italy to avert the evil eye, the hand 
 being cast either in the position prescribed for 
 the blessing, or in that known as "the devil's 
 horns." 25 The most potent of these charms is 
 that known as the Mano Pantea, in which the 
 hand is embossed with various symbols of occult 
 meaning but infallible power ! 
 
 Closely connected with "the laying-on of 
 hands" was the old ceremony of "touching for 
 the king's evil." On a given day, people 
 afflicted with particular diseases used to as- 
 semble at Whitehall ; and the sovereign used 
 either to touch them personally, or used to have 
 distributed to them pieces of money, or rings, 
 which had been hallowed by the royal touch. 26 
 Many authentic accounts of this ceremony are 
 to be found in contemporary literature. The 
 custom is of the highest antiquity. Suetonius 
 and Tacitus record instances of cures performed 
 in this manner by the Emperor Vespasian at 
 Alexandria, cures which are wholly marvellous 
 in the recital ; 2 ? and as late as the reign of 
 
 25 A Manual of Cheirosophy. ^ 23, 24. 
 
 26 Gentleman's Magazine. 1747, p. 13; 1751, p. 414; 1829 (ii.), 
 p. 499. 
 
 27 Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers (London, 1834), p. 155 
 Hume's Essays, Part 111., sect. x.
 
 HAND SUPERSTITIONS AND CUSTOMS. 2Q 
 
 Queen Anne, Dr. Johnson was touched for 
 some real or fancied ill by the sovereign. Her- 
 rick has beautifully recorded such a cure in the 
 lines : 
 
 " Oh, lay that hand on me, 
 Adored Caesar, and my faith is such, 
 I shall be cured, if that my king but touch. 
 The evil is not yours, my sorrow sings, 
 Mine is the evil, but the cure the king's." 
 
 Hesperidet. 
 
 What I have now said sufficiently demon- 
 strates the importance with which the hand has 
 always been invested, and gives us some insight 
 into the atrocity of the punishment of cutting 
 off the hands, which was so much in vogue 
 among the ancient Greeks and Romans, which 
 has been largely practised in our own country 
 [England], and which exists still as a favorite 
 form of punishment among Oriental nations ; a 
 punishment which is the most horrible that it 
 is possible to conceive, for it entirely and per- 
 manently precludes- the possibility of the suf- 
 ferer ever making his own living honestly in 
 the future. As late as the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, this punishment was inflicted in England 
 upon persons who should commit any assault 
 in a court of justice ; and Mr. Pepys refers
 
 30 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 graphically and quaintly to an occasion of the 
 kind. 28 
 
 From the cutting-off of hands to the cutting- 
 off of thumbs is but a short step ; and from the 
 Roman coward, who by cutting off his thumbs, 
 lest he should be sent to the wars, produced 
 the modern word "poltroon" (from the words 
 pollice truncato}, to the invention of the thumb- 
 screw by the Spaniards, the amputation or 
 mutilation of the thumb, as being the most 
 important digit of the hand, has been awarded 
 as a punishment for felonies and political of- 
 fences of various degrees. 
 
 Upon the importance of the thumb in the 
 study of the hand, too much stress could not 
 possibly be laid. It was with the thumb that 
 the Romans spared the fallen gladiator's life, 
 or condemned him to death ; it is by licking 
 his thumb that the Ulster man clinches his 
 bargains ; whilst it was by biting his thumb at 
 Abram that Sampson, in " Romeo and Juliet," 
 engaged the adherents of the Montagues and 
 Capulets in a street brawl. 29 It is by the prick- 
 ing of her thumbs that the witch in " Macbeth " 
 knows that "something evil her way comes," 
 
 28 Science of the Hand, Index: sub Amputation of the Hand 
 * Act I., scene 2.
 
 HAND SUPERSTITIONS AND CUSTOMS. 31 
 
 a peculiarity of this digit which was shared, we 
 are told, by the Irish hero Fingal. 
 
 Who is there who has never heard of the 
 itching palm 3 as a sign of avarice ? Stevens 
 has truly observed that all sudden pains of the 
 body, which cannot immediately be accounted 
 for, were anciently assumed to be presages of 
 events about to happen. This theory con- 
 cerning the itching palm has been developed 
 from a much older one, which lays it down 
 as an axiom that an itching palm is the fore- 
 runner of a coming legacy, or gift of money, 
 a superstition which came originally from 
 Persia. 31 
 
 Is there any one among us who has not heard 
 a score of jingles and superstitions concerning 
 finger-nails? Even as I write, there come flit- 
 ting through my mind the old rhymes as to the 
 days for cutting them, and the white spots which 
 we find in them. As to what are the right days 
 on which to pare the nails, the superstitions are 
 innumerable and extremely antique. No Roman 
 citizen would ever pare his nails save upon the 
 Ferics Nunt&iue, which recurred at intervals of 
 
 30 Science of the Hand. ^[ 4. 
 
 31 G.Atkinson: Customs and Manners of the Women of Persia. 
 lLondon, 1832.)
 
 32 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 nine days; 32 and I have come across old ladies 
 in country districts who not only 'choose care- 
 fully the days upon which to cut their own and 
 their children's nails, but even make a' point of 
 cutting them over the leaves of the Bible, to 
 insure their continuance in the paths of honesty 
 and of virtue. 33 
 
 32 Ausonius : Eclogarium, 373. 
 
 33 Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. (London, 1870.!
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HAND. 33 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HAND. 
 
 LET us devote a few moments to the consid- 
 eration of the exquisite construction of the 
 member with which we are concerned at this 
 present. 
 
 The first thing which cannot fail to strike us 
 at once, concerning the hand, is its complete 
 perfection. In no other combination of bones, 
 muscles, and nerves, and in no other animal, 
 do we find a perfection which results in such 
 superiority with regard to strength, variety, 
 rapidity, and extent of motion ; and this perfec- 
 tion resulting, as it undoubtedly does, from 
 the intimate relations which exist between the 
 hand and the intellect, we are irresistibly com- 
 pelled to ask with Sir Charles Bell, "Is it noth- 
 ing to have our minds awakened to the percep- 
 tion of the numerous proofs of design which 
 present themselves in the study of the hand, to 
 be brought to the conviction that every thing in 
 its structure is orderly and systematic, and that
 
 34 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 the most perfect mechanism, the most minute 
 and curious apparatus, and sensibilities the 
 most delicate and appropriate, are all combined 
 in operation that we may move the hand." 34 
 And further, we are bound to say, with Galen, 3S 
 that its entire structure is such that it could 
 not be improved by any conceivable alteration. 
 In the human hand, each part is subordinated 
 to a harmonious combination of function with 
 another part, and each by a special modification 
 of its own, so that every single bone is distin- 
 guishable from another. Each digit has its own 
 peculiar character and name ; and the thumb 
 which among the lower animals is the least 
 important and constant of the five digits, be- 
 comes in man the most important of all, making 
 the member "a hand," properly so called, as 
 Professor Sir Richard Owen has justly re- 
 marked ; 3& the hand, which characterizes man 
 alone, in justification of the words of the Persian 
 poet, Omar-i-Khayyam, 
 
 " Ten Powers and nine Spheres, eight Heavens made He, 
 And Planets seven of six sides we see ; 
 Five Senses, and four Elements, three Souls, 
 Two Worlds, but only one, O MAN ! like thee." 37 
 
 34 Op. Clt. 35 O p, c jt. 
 
 36 On the Nature of Limbs. (London, 1849.) 
 
 3 ? Whinfield's translation, verse 120. (London, 1883.)
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HAND. 35 
 
 And when we come to consider the question, 
 it is the thumb, and the thumb alone, that 
 gives to the hand the finishing touch of its per- 
 fection. Without the thumb, how impotent, 
 comparatively speaking, the grasp of the fin- 
 gers ! but let the thumb be brought into oppo- 
 sition and action, and the fingers find a fulcrum 
 whence to apply 'their tremendous leverage, 
 and the hand becomes, for its size, the most 
 powerful mechanism of the human body. 
 
 " But," people have said to me, " I can never 
 see any difference between the hands of differ- 
 ent people." That this should be literally the 
 case, seems to me to be impossible, regard be- 
 ing had to the fact that man is a sentient being, 
 endowed with powers of observation. But a 
 very little experience will enormously increase 
 the acuteness of those powers of observation. 
 And just as the specialist and the connoisseur 
 come to distinguish infinitesimal variations in 
 works of art, just as the banker's clerk detects 
 the forged bank-note after it has deceived 
 many people less accustomed to handling such 
 things, the cheirosophist very soon comes to 
 compare mentally the hands which he sees, 
 with all those that he has ever seen before, until 
 the classification of hands, according to the
 
 36 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 leading types to which I am about to draw your 
 attention, becomes a purely mechanical opera- 
 tion, and it becomes a familiar fact, that, just as 
 our faces and characters present infinite varia- 
 tions, so no two hands, or pairs of hands, are 
 identical. 
 
 There exists a very interesting account of a 
 man discovering a murderer solely by the con- 
 volutions of the skin upon the ball of the 
 thumb. 
 
 Visiting the scene of the murder shortly after 
 its committal, the detective found upon the sill 
 of the window by which the murderer had es- 
 caped, an imprint of the spiral lines of the ball 
 of his thumb left in blood. Tracing this care- 
 fully, he tracked the murderer gradually from 
 place to place, taking impressions of the balls 
 of hundreds of thumbs on his way, under the 
 pretence of telling men's fortunes by this means ; 
 but he never found a figure to correspond with 
 the one traced in blood at the scene of the mur- 
 der, until he found the murderer himself, and 
 then, suddenly accusing him, brought him to 
 confession and the scaffold. 
 
 This infinite variation is still more perceptible 
 in the general formation of the hands ; and by 
 a careful study and comparison the cheirosophist
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HAND. 37 
 
 is enabled, as I shall presently show, to pro- 
 nounce upon the capacities of the owner of the 
 hand, just as the sportsman can tell from the 
 foot of the dog or the horse the breed and capa- 
 bilities of the animal. " Ex pede Herculem" is 
 the motto upon which we proceed in cheiroso- 
 phy, as in most other sciences ; and by studying 
 the infinite variations of hands, you will come 
 imperceptibly, and by degrees, to a perfect 
 understanding of the varied characteristics of 
 man. 
 
 The gradual and perfect development of the 
 hand is one of the most interesting studies of 
 the physiologist. In the human embryo, when 
 there appears no definite bodily formation, the 
 rudimentary hand is plainly distinguishable. 
 At birth, save for the disproportion of the palm 
 to the fingers, the hand is perfectly formed, 
 and the main osseous construction is complete 
 at about the age of fourteen ; so that at four- 
 teen the permanent shape given to the hand by 
 the mental capacities may be read like an open 
 book, by the expert in cheirosophy. This per- 
 fected development of the hand is what must 
 next occupy our attention ; though, be it under- 
 stood, I do not propose to discourse here at 
 length as I have done in " A Manual of Chei-
 
 38 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 rosophy," and in "The Science of the Hand," 
 upon the anatomy of the member. Still it is ne- 
 cessary that, before impressing upon your minds 
 the leading types of hands, you should be in a 
 position to understand by the development of 
 what tissues the variations of those types are 
 produced. 
 
 The skeleton of the hand consists of twenty- 
 seven bones, eight composing the carpus or 
 wrist, five composing the metacarpus or palm, 
 twelve forming the phalanges of the fingers, 
 and two forming the thumb. (Plate I.) The 
 small bones of the carpus, fitting exquisitely 
 into one another as they do, have their articu- 
 lating surfaces covered with a layer of cartilage, 
 so that the whole forms a quasi-solid and 
 highly elastic mass, which is gifted with enor- 
 mous strength, and which' forms, as it were, a 
 " buffer " which is capable of resisting a very 
 powerful jar indeed. This mass of bones is 
 not completely developed until the twelfth year, 
 which accounts for the fact that until this age 
 the wrist is comparatively weak. 
 
 The five long bones of the metacarpus are 
 slightly incurved, which imparts the familiar 
 hollowness to the palm. At the lower ends of 
 these bones, a little mass of bone, termed an
 
 Plate I.- THE BONES OF THE HAND. 
 
 (Fr=ni a male adult skeleton.)
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HAND. 41 
 
 epiphysis, becomes gradually developed, and at- 
 taches itself to the shaft at about the twentieth 
 year. This adds enormously to the strength of 
 the hand, so that it may be said that the perfect 
 ossification of the hand does not take place until 
 that time. 
 
 The fingers consist, as we see, of three pha 
 langes, and the thumb of two, which correspond 
 with the first and third of the fingers, the mid- 
 dle phalanx being absent. Besides the little 
 masses of bone to which I have alluded in the 
 metacarpus, we often find among the tendons 
 at the joint of the thumb, little embedded 
 bones termed "sesamoid bones:" these enor- 
 mously increase the strength, the leverage, of 
 the joints ; so that where you see prominent 
 joints upon the thumbs, you may always be sure 
 of finding great manual strength. 
 
 There are two principal layers of muscles in 
 the hand, a superficial and a deep layer ; they 
 are attached to the ends of the bones by means 
 of the tendons and the little ridges called pro- 
 cesses ; and the point concerning them, to which 
 I desire to call your attention, is the exquisite 
 mechanism and enormous strength of these 
 tendons, which, radiating from the wrist, give 
 unlimited variety, and almost unlimited force,
 
 42 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 to the movements of the muscles of the hands. 
 You see these particularly when the back of 
 the hand is made rigid. Observe also the 
 powerful tendon of the thumb. 
 
 The hand is perhaps more liberally supplied 
 with arteries and veins than any other member 
 of the body. It is, to a great measure, this fact 
 which gives to the hand its intense keenness 
 of sensibility of touch. There used to exist an 
 interesting old superstition (which is, I regret 
 to say, without foundation) to the effect that 
 the third finger was connected directly with the 
 heart by means of a vein. 38 
 
 I should greatly like to discuss the nervous 
 system of the hand, but the space at my disposal 
 renders such a discussion impossible. We must, 
 however, bear in mind that the nerves are more 
 numerous, more delicate, and more highly de- 
 veloped in the hand, than in any other part of 
 the human body, excepting perhaps the lips. 
 In the hands and lips, the nerves are first de- 
 veloped in the human subject; and it is for 
 this reason that a baby always grasps with that 
 nervous infantile clutch any thing which pre- 
 sents itself, and carries it instinctively and im- 
 mediately to its mouth for identification. This 
 
 38 A Manual of Cheirosophy. ^f 37.
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HAND. 43 
 
 nervous system reaches, as you know, its high- 
 est development in the skin ; and it is the rows 
 of touch corpuscles, the bulbs at the ends of 
 the nerves, and the little sensitive heads called 
 " pacinian bodies," which form the lines in the 
 palms, with which we have presently to deal. 
 These lines are formed by the culminating 
 points of the sensory apparatus, and not, as 
 people are so fond of saying, by the mere fold- 
 ing of the hands. If proof were required of 
 this statement, we should find it in the fact 
 that these lines are found in the palms of the 
 hands at birth, and even long before birth, in 
 the human infant. 39 
 
 Concerning the physiology of the hand, I have 
 done. I particularly wanted, however, to give 
 you a few leading facts in this connection, be- 
 cause the formation, the physical composition, 
 of the hand, like that of every part of the body, 
 depends entirely upon the uses to which it is 
 put, the circumstances and physical conditions 
 which surround it ; in a word, upon the mental 
 characteristics which prompt and direct those uses 
 to which it is put. It is a well-known physio- 
 logical fact, that upon the duties imposed upon 
 
 39 Science of the Hand, p. 70, note 91 ; and Quain's Anatomy, 
 vol. ii. p. 214.
 
 44 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY, 
 
 the limbs, their constitution and forms depend ; 
 a fact of which I have treated at much length in 
 "A Manual of Cheirosophy." I am therefore 
 about to explain to you the science of cheiroso- 
 ' phy by reading these data backward : that is 
 to say, I am not going to tell you that certain 
 mental and physical peculiarities will produce 
 certain given forms of hand, but I am going to 
 show you certain types of hands, and tell you 
 what are the mental characteristics which have 
 brought about the formation of those types, so 
 that, by looking at the hand, you can tell at a 
 glance the character, the instincts, the habits, 
 and the intellectual faculties of such people as 
 you may be thrown into contact with. 
 
 This is what I have been leading up to ; this 
 is the science of cheirosophy ; and this is the 
 art of which I am about to lay before you what 
 have been erroneously called "the secrets."
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 45 
 
 PART III. 
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS: 
 CHEIROGNOMY. 
 
 THAT man should be ever striving to attain 
 to that class of knowledge which is known 
 as " divination," is hardly strange ; man's na- 
 ture, as we know (alas, too well ! ) being ever 
 to progress. How many are there to-day, who 
 from their hearts would say, like Democritus, 
 " I would rather be the possessor of one of the 
 cardinal secrets of nature, than of the diadem 
 of Persia." 
 
 The time has passed when such studies as 
 this should be met only with derision. Modern 
 science has established the doctrine of the fixity 
 of the Laws of Nature. We know that the 
 events of our lives succeed one another in con- 
 sequence of one another; that the whole system 
 of human existence obeys the great law of cause 
 and effect ; and judging a man's character by 
 means of a glance at his physical peculiarities 
 is, after all, merely placing implicit faith in what
 
 46 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 Newman Smyth has called "the divine veracity 
 of nature." 40 The law of continual development, 
 which has evolved astronomy out of astrology, 
 chemistry out of alchemy, and craniology out of 
 metoposcopy, has derived yet another science 
 from an original, which was in its inception 
 hardly more than the hap-hazard and conjectural 
 vaticinations of the impudent charlatan ; has 
 brought the Science of Cheirosophy out of the 
 ruins of the ancient and mediaeval Palmistry. 
 
 No one will deny that the use of an organ or 
 member is indicated by its aspects ; and from 
 the use indicated by the aspects, what is more 
 easy to deduce than the mental characteristics 
 which prompt that use ? (Lavater told Goethe, 
 on one occasion, that when in the practice of 
 his priestly office he held the bag in church, he 
 tried to observe only the hands ; and he fully 
 satisfied himself that in every individual the 
 shape of the hand and of the fingers, and their 
 action, were distinctly different and individually 
 characteristic.) 
 
 Again, it has been said that forced labor of a 
 particular kind will entirely alter the shape of 
 the hands. Now, this is not the case. Labor 
 diametrically opposed to the inclinations of the 
 
 40 Old Faiths in New Light (New York, 1879), P- 2 5 2 -
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 47 
 
 mind, if forced upon an individual, will often 
 modify the outlines of a hand ; but it will never 
 alter the shape, so as to render it uncertain 
 what was the natural bent of the inclination. 
 The hand cannot alter. And it is here that I 
 claim for cheirosophy an advantage over every 
 other science of the kind. The phrenologist 
 may be deceived by the growth of the hair ; the 
 physiognomist may be led astray by a fixed and 
 unnatural expression of the face : but the chei- 
 rosophist finds in the hand an unvarying and 
 unalterable indication of the character, a mirror 
 whose images the bearer is powerless to distort. 
 The science of Cheirosophy is divided into 
 two great branches, Cheirognomy, or the sci- 
 ence of deducing the characteristics of man 
 from the shape of his hands ; and Cheiromancy, 
 or the art of expounding to man the events of 
 his life, and the inner shades of his character, 
 by an inspection of his palms. The latter of 
 these two branches is of incomparable antiquity, 
 but has been reduced within reasonable bounds, 
 and invested with all the attributes of an exact 
 science, only within the last fifty years, by 
 Adrien Desbarrolles. The former is a compar- 
 atively new science, having been formulated at 
 the beginning of this century by M. le Capi-
 
 48 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 taine Casimir Stanislas d'Arpentigny, whose 
 book, "La Science de la Main," it has been 
 my most interesting task and labor of love to 
 translate and to annotate. 
 
 M. d'Arpentigny first had his thoughts turned 
 in this direction whilst serving with his regi- 
 ment in the Peninsular war in the year 1820. 
 One day, walking along one of the highroads of 
 Andalusia, he was accosted by a gypsy woman, 
 who offered to read for him his fortune upon 
 his palm in exchange for the ordinary douceur. 
 The language in which she clothed the indica- 
 tions which she expounded, struck him pro- 
 foundly ; and from that day forth he commenced 
 to study the works of the older cheiromants, 
 and to observe carefully the hands of all with 
 whom he was thrown in contact. Near where 
 he lived in the country stood the house of 
 a celebrated mechanician and mathematician, 
 whose wife was imbued with a strong taste for 
 art. The result of this opposition of taste in 
 husband and wife was that they gave a series 
 of alternately artistic and scientific receptions, 
 to which Captain d'Arpentigny went indiffer- 
 ently. By degrees, he found that he could class 
 the various guests of his host and hostess by 
 the aspects of their hands ; and going a step
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 49 
 
 farther, he found that hands might be classed, 
 for practical purposes, under eight categories, 
 hands which belonged to any one of seven 
 clearly accentuated and distinguished types, or 
 to an eighth class consisting of hands which 
 could not be properly placed in any of the 
 preceding seven. 
 
 The construction of these seven types, upon 
 which I am about to embark, composes the 
 science of Cheirognomy. Firstly, however, I 
 will draw your attention to a few general indi- 
 cations with regard to the hand considered as 
 a whole. 
 
 If the palm of the hand is narrow and skinny, 
 it denotes always timidity, a feeble mind, and 
 want of moral and intellectual force. If, on the 
 other hand, it is too thick and big and strong, 
 it denotes a low intelligence, and a tendency to 
 brutality. A hollow, deep palm always signifies 
 misery, ill-luck, and failures in life. 
 
 Fingers are divided into two great classes : 
 these are, fingers which are smooth, i.e., whose 
 joints are not prominent ; and fingers which 
 are knotty, i.e., whose joints stand out and are 
 clearly visible. These latter, again, are subdi- 
 vided into fingers with one joint only prominent, 
 and those with both.
 
 gO PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 Fingers which are smooth always denote a 
 tendency to act upon instinct, upon impube, 
 upon intuition, rather than by reason, cal- 
 culation, or deduction. If your fingers are 
 smooth, you are highly endowed with more 
 natural tact and grace than your knotty-fin- 
 gered fellows. 
 
 Fingers which are knotty denote always a 
 tendency to order and arrangement. If your 
 fingers are such, you will be gifted with good 
 taste, which is born of reason, rather than 
 with natural tact, which is instinctive. If the 
 upper joint (A in Plate II.) is developed, it de- 
 notes a well-ordered mind, a neat, administra- 
 tive disposition, and reason in the ideas. If the 
 loiver joint (B in Plate II.) is developed, this 
 order and reason applies itself to things mate- 
 rial rather than to things mental and psycho- 
 logical. The lower joint, therefore, is termed 
 the joint of material order ; the upper one is 
 termed the joint of philosophy. The material 
 and worldly mind is denoted by a development 
 of the lower, whilst the philosophic mind is 
 denoted by a development of the upper. 
 
 Both joints developed indicate the most 
 pronounced instincts of order and philosophy. 
 Such hands denote science, analysis, and a
 
 D 
 
 Plate II. THE THUMB, THE JOINTS, AND THE 
 LINES IN THE HAND.
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 53 
 
 strong love of and search after abstract and 
 absolute truth. 
 
 Art is the domain of smooth, science is the 
 domain of knotty fingers. These facts must be 
 clearly laid hold of at the outset, for they are 
 the very corner-stones of cheirognomy. A 
 jointed hand can never become smooth, but 
 with age and experience a smooth hand may 
 become knotty. This change takes place when 
 our minds have become more sceptic, more rea- 
 sonable, and more mechanical than they were 
 when the illusions of youth tinged all things 
 with the roseate tints of poetry and of inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 A hand i% either long or short by comparison 
 with its fellows, and the indications afforded by 
 these peculiarities are of synthesis or of analy- 
 sis. To explain : People with short fingers are 
 quicker, more impulsive, act more on the spur 
 of the moment, than people with long fingers ; 
 they prefer generalities to details, jump at once 
 to conclusions, and are quick at grasping all 
 the bearings of a subject or scheme. Their 
 judgment is quick, and their action is prompt, 
 making up their minds the moment a subiect 
 presents itself to them. If, however, the fingers 
 are very short, it results in cruelty and want
 
 54 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 of tact. Joints will assist the promptitude of 
 short fingers, for the calculation of the joints 
 will combine itself with the quickness of the 
 short fingers. 
 
 With long fingers, on the contrary, we find 
 a love of detail, an instinct of minutiae, and a 
 punctilious carefulness, which amounts some- 
 times even to frivolity. Such persons are tidy 
 as to their appointments, dignified, easily put 
 out, and very careful about trifles. These char- 
 acteristics will be intensified by a development 
 of the upper joint in the fingers. Such people 
 elaborate detail at the expense of the mass, are 
 distrustful, and continually seek for inner mean- 
 ings to things. M. d'Arpentigny himself had 
 fingers of this description ; and the result was, 
 that his book on the hand is filled with an elab- 
 orate mass of details and side-issues, which is 
 most distracting to the reader, unless his fin- 
 gers harmonize with those of the author. Such 
 fingers often also betray cowardice, deceit, and 
 affectation. 
 
 Thus, therefore, large-handed people love 
 details, and like things to be small and exqui- 
 sitely finished and perfect, whilst small-handed 
 people love masses, and like things to be large 
 and grandiose. Minute workers always have
 
 ON THE SFIAPES OF HANDS. 55 
 
 large hands, whereas the constructors of colos- 
 sal works always have small hands. Thus, 
 small-handed people always write large, whilst 
 large-handed people always write small. 
 
 It is only the medium hand that can appre- 
 ciate, at the same time, the mass and the details 
 of a subject. 
 
 Thick ringers, especially at their bases, invari- 
 ably denote luxury, and, when highly developed, 
 sensuality. Twisted and malformed ringers, 
 with short nails, denote cruelty, tyranny, and a 
 worrying, teasing disposition. If a hand is stiff 
 and hard, opening with difficulty to its fullest 
 extent, it betrays stubbornness of character, 
 and avarice. If, on the contrary, the ringers, 
 being very supple, have a tendency to turn back, 
 they denote, as a rule, cleverness and inquisi- 
 tiveness, nearly always generosity, ending in 
 extravagance. 
 
 If the fingers fit close together, it is a sign of 
 avarice ; if they are very smooth and transpa- 
 rent, they betray indiscretion and loquacity. If 
 very twisted, so as to show considerable chinks 
 between them, it is always a sign of that excess 
 of sympathy, which is known to the vulgar as 
 curiosity. 
 
 In examining the hand, observe particularly
 
 56 PRACTICAL CIIEIROSOPIIY. 
 
 whether or no the tips of the fingers are fur- 
 nished with little fleshy protuberances, which 
 stand out from the curved surfaces of the fin- 
 ger-tips. These, when present, always denote 
 sensitiveness, which is more or less keen as the 
 protuberance is more or less developed. 
 
 Beyond this, the tips of the fingers present 
 four principal appearances. They are either 
 spatulate (i.e., clubbed and broad), square, conic 
 (or rounded like a thimble), or pointed. We 
 shall consider the indications afforded by these 
 formations, at greater length, when discussing 
 the leading types of hands ; shortly, their sig- 
 nifications are as follows : 
 
 If your fingers are broad i.e., spatulate 
 at the tips, your main desire in life will be for 
 action, activity, movement, locomotion, and 
 manual exercises ; you will love things from the 
 utilitarian point of view ; you will have tastes 
 for agriculture, commerce, mechanics, indus- 
 tries, and the applied sciences. Bearing in 
 mind what has been said concerning the joints, 
 if your spatulate fingers are smooth, you will do 
 these things spontaneously; if knotty, reason- 
 ably and by calculation. 
 
 If your finger-tips are square, your prevailing 
 characteristics will be symmetry and exactitude
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. $? 
 
 of habit and thought. You will have tastes for 
 philosophy, languages, and logic ; in literature, 
 you will require analysis and arrangement. 
 You will be imbued with respect for established 
 authority, and with a love of theories, of rheto- 
 ric, and of order and tidiness : but, unless your 
 joints be developed, this love of tidiness will go 
 no further ; i.e., it will not be practical. Both 
 joints highly developed give one the most 
 advanced passion for symmetry, regularity, and 
 discipline. Square-fingered people are always 
 musical : brilliant executants are always spatu- 
 late-fingered, but the most thorough musicians 
 have always square hands. Singers, on the 
 other hand, have always conic or pointed 
 fingers. 
 
 With conic fingers, all your instincts will be 
 artistic, your whole soul will be given over to a 
 love of the beautiful, and you are certain to be 
 enthusiastic and romantic. Joints give a cer- 
 tain moral force to such fingers as these, as also 
 does a good-sized thumb. 
 
 If your fingers are pointed, i.e., long and 
 finely drawn out, yours will be exclusively the 
 domain of idealism, of religious fervor, and of 
 indifference to worldly interests. 
 
 It must be borne in mind, that an exaggera-
 
 58 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 tion of any of these formations indicates an 
 excess, a diseased condition of the instincts indi- 
 cated by the formation. Thus, an exaggerated 
 pointedness will indicate excessive romanticism, 
 folly, and imagination, which develops into the 
 wildest eccentricity and into deceit. 
 
 The color of the hands varies so continually 
 with the temperature, that it is practically im- 
 possible to lay down definite readings for it. 
 But this one indication is infallible : if the hands 
 are always white, never or hardly ever changing 
 color, it is a sure sign of egoism, of selfish- 
 ness, and of a want of real sympathy with the 
 troubles of others. 
 
 As in physiology, so in Cheirosophy, the 
 thumb is by far the most important part of the 
 hand. It is divided into three parts : the root, 
 or Mount of Venus ; the second phalanx (C in 
 Plate II.), which is that of logic ; and the first 
 (D in Plate II.), which is that of will. The 
 second phalanx indicates our greater or less 
 amount of perception, judgment, and reasoning 
 power ; the first, by its greater or less develop- 
 ment, indicates the strength of our will, our 
 decision, and our capacity for taking the initia- 
 tive. If the nailed phalanx is short, weak, and
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 59 
 
 thin, it betrays feebleness of will, want of decis- 
 ion, and of promptitude in action, with want 
 of self-reliance and constancy. With such a 
 phalanx of will, if the lower phalanx (of logic) 
 is long and strong, you will be able to give ex- 
 cellent reasons for your lack of decision. Your 
 common-sense will be excellent, but you will not 
 have sufficient strength of will-power to put 
 your common-sense into practice, and act boldly 
 on the suggestions of your better judgment. 
 
 If, on the contrary, the phalanx of will be 
 long, and that of logic be short, you will be 
 quick, active, impulsive, and tenacious of opin- 
 ions and purpose ; but, lacking the logic to guide 
 your will aright, you will run into the danger 
 of unreasoning obstinacy. 
 
 If the phalanx of will is not long, but broad, 
 it indicates always obstinacy ; and if this breadth 
 is excessive, it betrays passion, furious impulse, 
 tyranny, brutality, and even a tendency to 
 murder. 
 
 When the upper joint of the thumb turns 
 back, it is always a sign of extravagance, of lux- 
 ury, and of generosity carried to an extreme. It 
 will therefore be understood, as a generality, 
 that a large or long thumb indicates strength of 
 character, and individuality, whilst a small or
 
 60 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 short thumb indicates the reverse. I have dis- 
 cussed all the minutiae of the combinations of 
 large and small thumbs, with other formations 
 of the hand, in my book, " A Manual of Chei- 
 rosophy." 
 
 The consistency of hands is a great point 
 to be noticed ; indicating, as it does, the taste 
 which the subject possesses for physical exer- 
 tion. Soft hands are the indications of a quiet 
 temperament, inclining to laziness and even to 
 lethargy; whilst hard hands denote always an 
 imperious desire for action, and a love of hard 
 physical exercise or manual labor. These dif- 
 ferences show themselves in the way various 
 subjects put their tendencies into action. Thus 
 an artist with hard hands will depict scenes of 
 action, of real life, of movement, rather than the 
 ideal, imaginative pictures of the soft-handed 
 artist. The soft spatulate hand will love the 
 spectacle of action, and appreciate physical ac- 
 tivity in others, rather than practise it himself. 
 
 Soft-handed subjects are always greedy of the 
 marvellous, and fond of occult sciences, from 
 their love of contemplation : whereas very hard 
 hands are always superstitious, by reason of 
 their want of reflection to make them other- 
 wise. Soft hands are more capable of tender-
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 6l 
 
 ness and affection than of true love, but hard 
 hands are more capable of lasting affection than 
 of tenderness or passion. 
 
 Smoothness and a gentle firmness of the 
 hands always indicate delicacy of mind, whilst 
 dryness and roughness always denote rudeness 
 and insensibility of mind. A wrinkled hand, if 
 it is soft, denotes sensitiveness and uprightness, 
 but if it is hard it betrays pugnacity and irrita- 
 bility. 
 
 The gestures of the hand speak a language of 
 their own, which I have made the subject of a 
 complete section in my " Manual of Cheiroso- 
 phy." To keep the hands always closed, de- 
 notes secretiveness, and often untruth. If you 
 think a man is telling you a lie, look at his 
 hands ; he cannot lie with his hands open. 
 The same remark applies when the hands are 
 kept studiously quiet and impassive : this also 
 denotes vanity and self-consciousness. 
 
 But little can be learned from the nails, but a 
 few of their aspects have very marked and 
 infallible significations. Nails which are short 
 and broad indicate a spirit of criticism and pug- 
 nacity, a love of domination and control, and a 
 tendency to fidgetiness and a meddlesome dis-
 
 62 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 position. Women with short nails are gener- 
 ally inclined to be termagants. The good 
 points of short nails are, of course, quickness 
 of intellect, and perspicuity; in a good hand 
 they will merely denote a spirit of sarcasm 
 and of good-humored irony. 
 
 Long, curved nails betray cruelty of disposi- 
 tion. The finer and more delicate the shape of 
 the nails, the finer and more delicate the mind 
 indicated by them. The habit of biting the 
 nails, it is hardly necessary to remark, results 
 from nervousness and a self-worrying disposition. 
 These are the main indications which may be 
 read in a moment from a casual glance at the 
 hands. We will now pass shortly in review 
 the seven leading types of hands. 
 
 The seven types of hands are the elementary, 
 the spatulate, the conic, the square, the knotty, 
 and the pointed, with a seventh hybrid type 
 which I have called the mixed hand. The Ele- 
 mentary hand (Plate III.) is so called from its 
 belonging exclusively to the lowest grade of 
 human intelligence, and argues merely sufficient 
 intellect for the support of human life. The 
 fingers are short, and thick, and stiff; the thumb 
 is short, and slightly turned back ; the palm is
 
 Plate HI. -THE ELEMENTARY HAND. 
 Denoting the lowest grade of intelligence, s2oth, 
 
 dulness, and coarseness. 
 (From the cast of an Esquimau hand.)
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 65 
 
 large and thick and hard, and, as a rule, longer 
 than the fingers, as is the case in an infant's 
 hand. 
 
 Such hands are very rare indeed in England 
 or America, and, indeed, are hardly to be met 
 with at all in the pure state in latitudes as south- 
 ern, and in climates as clement, as ours. They 
 betoken a crass and sluggish intelligence. They 
 have no imaginations or passions beyond the 
 merely brutish ones, no instincts of cultivation, 
 and hardly the instincts of human society, 
 Though, as I have said, the pure elementary 
 type does not exist among us, we often find 
 hands that come within measurable distance of 
 it, and then we find a very distinguishable tend- 
 ency to the characteristics which I have named. 
 
 The next type, the Spatulate (Plate IV.), or 
 Active hand, is very much more common among 
 us. This hand has the tips of its fingers slight- 
 ly flattened out like the spatula with which the 
 chemist mixes his drugs, and from this it de- 
 rives its name. The thumb is rather large, and 
 the whole hand has a tendency to hardness. 
 The main characteristics of the type are action, 
 movement, energy. Such subjects are resolute, 
 self-confident, active, rather than delicate-mind- 
 ed ; constant and faithful, but unromantic in
 
 66 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 love. If such a subject has a small thumb, 
 much of his energy and activity will be mis- 
 directed or aimless, though a long phalanx of 
 logic will go far towards remedying this defect. 
 Smooth fingers will give him elegance and spon- 
 taneity in his active pursuits, and inspiration in 
 the direction of his exertions. Spatulate sub- 
 jects make the best colonists, as they only look 
 at the useful side of things, attaching themselves 
 to countries only for the useful things they de- 
 rive from them. They are very slightly sensual, 
 and like travelling about and shifting for them- 
 selves. They like colossal architecture rather 
 than beauty of design, wealth rather than luxury, 
 quantity rather than quality. People talk a good 
 deal of nonsense about a fine hand as an indica- 
 tion of ancient race. As a matter of fact, the 
 pure descendants of the old fighting Saxon nobil- 
 ity are always distinguishable by their spatulate 
 hands. In religion, spatulate-handed subjects 
 are conventional above all things, Protestants 
 rather than Catholics. It is thus that these 
 hands are in a majority in Northern latitudes ; 
 whereas in Southern climes, where the atmos- 
 phere produces a more romantic turn of mind, 
 the Catholic religion, and pointed or conical 
 hands, have the numerical advantage. Promi-
 
 Plate IV. THE SPATULATE HAND. 
 
 Denoting action, movement, energy, self-reliance, 
 and locomotion. 
 
 (The hand of the " great" Duke of Wellington.)
 
 Otf THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 69 
 
 nent joints give an intense love of science to 
 these hands, and make them expert in all 
 mechanical or applied sciences. Such men are 
 the best engravers, and the readiest inventors 
 in mechanical arts and sciences. Softness, of 
 course, as I have said, greatly modifies the 
 active qualities of the type. 
 
 Next to this, and by way of contrast, we have 
 the Conic, or Artistic hand (Plate V.). Of this 
 hand the fingers are always slightly broad at 
 the lower phalanges, diminishing gently to the 
 tips, which are conic or rounded. The joints 
 are not prominent, the thumb is generally small, 
 and the palm fairly developed. If your hand 
 presents these peculiarities of formation, you 
 are ruled by' impulse and instinct, rather than 
 by reason or calculation ; you are attracted by 
 the beautiful, rather than by the useful, aspects 
 of life and matter ; you are attracted by ease, 
 novelty, and liberty. Enthusiastic and impul- 
 sive, rather than forcible or determined, you 
 are at heart a pure Bohemian, and your imagina- 
 tion is as warm as your heart is cold ! 
 
 If the formations of your type are still more 
 accentuated, that is, if the palm is larger, the 
 fingers more drawn out, the* thumb still smaller, 
 you are still more the slave of your passions
 
 70 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 and your impulses. Your enthusiasm is higher, 
 your love warmer and shallower ; you are gen- 
 erous to a fault, painfully sensitive, and easily 
 moved. With such a hand, you are right to 
 strew the pathway of your life with roses ; but 
 you must not forget that when the petals have 
 fallen from the wreath of roses, it becomes a 
 crown of thorns. 
 
 Unfortunately, if the thumb is very weak, 
 and other bad signs, which I shall presently 
 expound, appear in the hand, you will often 
 find in such subjects only the bad qualities of 
 the type, sensuality, laziness, egotism, eccen- 
 tricity, dissipation, and deceit ; but a hand must 
 be very bad to show all this. The main char- 
 acteristics, the guiding principles, of the type 
 are, love of beauty and the beautiful, preference 
 of the ideal over the real, intuition, impulse, and 
 selfishness. 
 
 The next type is that of the Square, or Useful 
 hand (Plate VI.). This hand is generally large, 
 rather than small; the palm broad; the lower 
 joint, that of material order, developed ; the 
 tips of the fingers square, i.e., neither pointed 
 nor spread out ; the thumb rather large ; the 
 palm thick, hollow,- and rather firm. 
 
 The leading instincts on which this hand
 
 Plate V. THE CONIC HAND. 
 
 Denoting art, brilliancy, love of beauty, enthusiasm, 
 
 and generosity. 
 (The hand of Sir Frederick Leighton. P.R.A.)
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 73 
 
 founds its characteristics are perseverance, fore- 
 sight, order, and regularity. To these hands, 
 the useful is far preferable to the beautiful. 
 Their great passions are for organization, ar- 
 rangement, classification, regularity of form and 
 outline, and the acceptation of things pre- 
 scribed and understood as customary. They 
 are great disciplinarians, and are strongly im- 
 bued with a sense of the fitness of things ; 
 they prefer privileges to complete liberty, and 
 have a passion for experiences of all kinds. 
 
 If your hands are of this type, you are a 
 slave to arrangement ; you have a place for 
 every thing, and every thing is in its place. 
 Unless your joints are well developed, it is 
 quite possible that your drawers and cupboards 
 may be untidy ; but you will be outwardly in 
 perfect order, and, amid the chaos of your pos- 
 sessions, you will always know where to find 
 every thing, for memory is one of the most 
 precious attributes of the type. You will be 
 handy with your fingers, tidy in person, and 
 always most particular about your general 
 arrangements. You are suspicious, and quietly 
 cunning. Vigilant, and a complete master of 
 intrigue, you are a flatterer, and you like to be 
 flattered ; and you are also quietly and unosten- 
 tatiously ambitious. (
 
 74 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 If the joint of order is absent, yours is a 
 most enviable mind ; for you have the strongest 
 aptitude for metaphysical and abstract sciences, 
 with a natural capacity for checking your tend- 
 ency to enthusiasm. This is the cleverest 
 hand that exists. Heaven help you if with a 
 square hand both your joints are developed ! 
 you will be the most aggressively methodical 
 creature that ever existed, living by rote and 
 rule, and doing every thing by pre-arranged 
 order. Good sense and reasonable egoism are 
 the main features of th*e type. 
 
 The next is the Knotty or Philosophic type 
 of hand (Plate VII.) : its appearance is most dis- 
 tinctive. The palm is large and elastic ; both 
 joints are highly developed, especially the upper 
 one, which, with the half-conic, half-square for- 
 mation of the tips, gives a curious clubbed oval 
 appearance to the fingers. The thumb is large, 
 having its two phalanges of equal length. 
 
 The great characteristics of this hand are 
 analysis, meditation, philosophy, and deduction ; 
 and these continually lead to deism and de- 
 mocracy. Their main and vital instinct is, 
 however, a love of and search after abstract and 
 absolute truth. The joints give to the hand 
 calculation, method, and deduction. The quasi-
 
 wtf 
 
 Plate VI. -THE SQUARE HAND. 
 
 Denoting order, arrangement, method, symmetry 
 of form, and outline, and discipline. 
 
 (The hand of the author.)
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. ?J 
 
 conic formation of the finger-tips give it the 
 instincts of poetry and real beauty, and the 
 thumb gives it perseverance. Such subjects 
 pay more attention to the significance of things 
 than to their appearances ; their literature, 
 therefore, is notable for its clearness and util- 
 ity, rather than for its form or literary style. 
 They require to account for every thing. They 
 require reason in every thing. They form their 
 own opinions on all subjects, without reference 
 to those of other people, and form them after 
 the most careful analysis and consideration of 
 the questions involved. 
 
 Subjects of the philosophic type are essen- 
 tially sceptical in religion, for they refuse to look 
 at the emotional side of any thing. They are 
 therefore great advocates of social and religious 
 freedom, being moderate in all their pleasures. 
 The smaller the philosophic hand, the keener 
 its search after the attainment of truth ; the 
 larger it is, the more analytical it becomes. 
 
 The last type, the Pointed or Psychic hand 
 (Plate VIIL), is the most beautiful and delicate, 
 but, alas ! the most ideal and useless of all. 
 Small and delicate, with a thin palm, and fine, 
 long and pointed fingers, its joints are barely 
 visible, and it has a pretty little thumb. The 
 only thing to regret about it is its rarity.
 
 78 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 To these subjects belongs the domain of the 
 beautiful ideal. They have all the artistic in- 
 stinct of their conic-handed fellows, with none 
 of their bad points. They are guided entirely 
 by their idealism, their impulse, and their in- 
 stinct of abstract right. They never command, 
 for they are above any such earthly aggrandize- 
 ment, or material interests of any kind ; but 
 they always inspire respect, if only on account 
 of the beauty of their brilliant incomprehensi- 
 bility. In politics and religion, they acknowl- 
 edge no leadership, being guided only by their 
 innate sense of right and wrong. Theirs is the 
 talent of inspired lyric poetry, and they possess, 
 with this faculty, the more important one of 
 communicating their enthusiasm to others. It 
 is this that makes them such splendid orators 
 and preachers. These are the men who have a 
 real call to the ministry. I once heard the late 
 Henry Ward Beecher say, that when God calls 
 a man to preach, he generally calls a congrega- 
 tion to listen to him ; when this happens, you 
 may expect to see pointed fingers. Other kinds 
 of men often say they have heard a call : maybe 
 they have, but it wasn't for them, it was for 
 somebody else ! A joint will sometimes appear 
 in a hand of this kind ; this is fatal. Such a
 
 Plate VII. THE KNOTTY HAND. 
 
 Denoting philosophy, analysis, logic, deduction, science, 
 research, and truth. 
 
 (The hand of Sir Richard Owen, F.R.S., K.C.B.)
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 8 1 
 
 subject will be prone to rush from one extreme 
 to another ; he will be credulous, greedy of the 
 marvellous, discontented, and eccentric. Psy- 
 chic-handed people should never go beyond their 
 own intuitions, for they have not the gifts of 
 reason and of analysis. Sometimes, however, 
 both joints will appear in such a hand; this will 
 give doubt, fear, dejection, and revolutionary 
 ideas (but not practice). The only redeeming 
 point of such a hand is its capacity for inven- 
 tion, which is not, however, supported by the 
 necessary practical talents. 
 
 Finally, I must call your attention to the 
 hybrid type, known as the Mixed hand ; that 
 is to say, hands which being, as it were, inter- 
 mediate, so nearly resemble more than one type, 
 as to admit the possibility of their being mis- 
 taken for either. Thus a conic hand may be 
 nearly pointed, a square nearly spatulate, a 
 spatulate nearly philosophic, and so on. In 
 such cases the peculiarities of both types are 
 present in the character, and it is the task of 
 the cheirosophist so to combine them as to give 
 a true analysis of the subject under examina- 
 tion. Such subjects may generally be described 
 as "jacks of all trades, and masters of none;" 
 they attain to skill in a variety of pursuits, but
 
 82 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 seldom to excellence in any one. They are gen- 
 erally amusing, but seldom instructive. Their 
 great advantage is their adaptability and readi- 
 ness to suit themselves to any company in 
 which they may find themselves ; but these 
 advantages are generally combined with lack of 
 sincerity, application, or perseverance. 
 
 This is the Science of Cheirognomy. From 
 what I have said, you ought now to be able to 
 tell, by a rapid glance at the hands, the char- 
 acter of any one into whose company you are 
 thrown. In my "Manual of Cheirosophy," I 
 have devoted a special section to the minutiae 
 of Cheirognomy, as applied to the hands of the 
 softer sex. It is, however, only necessary for 
 me to say here that the same remarks apply to 
 women as to men, save that the qualities of 
 the more robust types are less, and those of the 
 gentler types are more, developed among them 
 than among us. It should also be remarked, 
 that the motives of the action of women must 
 be sought for in instinct, impulse, and intuition, 
 rather than in calculation or reason. It is, I 
 think, very generally admitted, that the instinct 
 of a woman is far superior to any amount of 
 reason, and this is why they usually dispense
 
 Plate VIH. THE POINTED HAND. 
 
 Denoting poetry, enthusiasm, idealism, abstract right, 
 impulse, and high ideals. 
 
 (The hand of " Violet Fane," the poetess.)
 
 ON THE SHAPES OF HANDS. 85 
 
 with the latter commodity. A ribald friend of 
 mine used to say that he never knew but one 
 woman who could understand reason, and she 
 wouldn't listen to it. It will, therefore, strike 
 the observer as natural that smooth fingers are 
 in a majority among women, rather than promi- 
 nently jointed ones. 
 
 I turn now to a branch of the science which, 
 though not so useful, is perhaps even more inter- 
 esting than Cheirognomy. I mean, to Cheiro- 
 mancy, whereby, in examining the mounts and 
 lines of the palm, the past, the present, and even 
 the future, may be explained and foretold.
 
 86 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 
 
 THERE have not been wanting authorities 
 who have claimed for cheiromancy, or, as 
 it used to be called, " cheiroscopy," the support 
 of Scripture, basing their arguments upon that 
 oft-cited passage of the Book of Job, which I 
 nave dissected and discussed at such length in 
 " A Manual of Cheirosophy," 4I and " The Sci- 
 ence of the Hand." The passage to which I 
 refer is cited in error, and there is no doubt 
 now that the science of cheirosophy is not 
 even remotely alluded to. But there is equally 
 no doubt that this science is of incomparable 
 antiquity ; and Juvenal tells us, that in his 
 time, 
 
 " The middle sort, who have not much to spare, 
 To cheiromancer's cheaper art repair, 
 Who clap the pretty palm to make the lines more fair." 42 
 
 The works of Aristotle, as I said some time 
 ago, are full of references to the science ; and 
 
 41 PP' 55-5 s - 42 Satyra vi., 1. 581. (Dryden's translation.)
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 8/ 
 
 it is interesting to know that one of the first 
 block books ever produced by the printing-press 
 (before the introduction of movable types) was 
 "Die Kunst Ciromantia," written by Johann 
 Hartlieb in 1448, and published at Augsburg 
 in 1495. 
 
 . The absolute origin of the art, panoplied, as 
 Mr. Edgar Saltus would say, "in the dim mag- 
 nificence of myth," was probably Oriental. Mr. 
 Herbert Giles, Her Majesty's consul at Shanghai, 
 than whom probably no greater authority on 
 Chinese culture exists, tells me that the science 
 was practised in China many centuries before 
 Christ. Philip Baldoeus alludes to its antiquity 
 in India, in the seventeenth century; 43 and we 
 know that Apollonius of Tyana 44 studied magic 
 in the time of our Lord, among the Brahmins 
 in that country. Whatever its antiquity, the 
 more one studies it, the more one is amazed by 
 the truths the inexplicable truths which it 
 teaches us. 
 
 It is strenuously objected to this science, 
 that it professes to predict with certainty 
 future events. Now, this is what it does not do ; 
 
 43 Wahrhiiftige ausfiirliche Beschreibung der ost-indischen Kiist- 
 en Malabar, etc. (Amsterdam, 1672), cap. v. p. 513. 
 
 44 William Godwin: Lives of the Necromancers (London, 183.1), 
 p. 158.
 
 88 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 but it teaches men to observe the great laws 
 of Cause and Effect so closely as to be able 
 to predict the almost inevitable results of exist- 
 ing circumstances. Cheirosophy aims at ascer- 
 taining the established conjunctions, which in 
 their turn establish the order of the universe. 
 
 They say it is impossible to predict a future 
 malady or death. What is more reasonable to 
 believe than that, of a future malady, the germ 
 already lurks in the system, which must ulti- 
 mately supervene, and may prove fatal ? Such 
 a germ as this must affect the universal nerve- 
 fluid, the vital principle ; and what is more 
 likely than that this affection should be visible 
 at the point where the nerves are most numer- 
 ous and apparent, and that is in the palm of 
 the hand ? 
 
 Then, so surely as the future exists already 
 for us, let us minutely examine the present, 
 which is forming and modifying and developing 
 that future. Our thoughts are free, as Sir 
 Richard Owen has said, to soar as far as any le- 
 gitimate analogy may seem to guide them rightly 
 across the boundless ocean of unknown truth ! 
 
 Cheirosophy is not fatalism. It never says 
 what shall be, shall be : it merely warns us 
 of what will happen if we pursue the course we
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 89 
 
 are adopting. If we neglect the warning, as 
 I have constantly known people to do, turn- 
 ing aside with a lofty smile, we have only our- 
 selves to blame when the events, which we 
 might easily have averted by an effort, of will, 
 supervene to our harm and annoyance. It is 
 true, that certain signs have been handed down 
 from generation to generation, such as the indi- 
 cations of coming accidents and sudden death ; 
 and, in numberless instances, my own personal 
 experiences have proved the correctness of 
 these signs, for the explanation of which it is 
 impossible to hazard any reasonable conjecture. 
 These facts, of which I will shortly give you 
 a few instances, simply exist as facts, and as 
 suck we are bound to accept them. 
 
 As to the expounding of the past, I would 
 argue, in the same way, that great events prin- 
 cipally affect our nerves, and this affection of 
 the nerves produces strange and infinitely varied 
 combinations of the lines in the palm. If trou- 
 ble can leave its marks upon the face, as Byron 
 says, 
 
 " The intersected lines of thought, 
 Those furrows which the burning share 
 Of sorrow ploughs untimely there; 
 Scars of the lacerated mind, 
 Which the soul's war doth leave behind,"
 
 90 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 why should not the same effect be produced 
 upon the hands, which are so much more sensi- 
 tive than the face ? 
 
 How continually one is told, by some one 
 who imagines he has discovered a brand-new 
 argument, that the lines are simply the result 
 of the folding of the hands! The evidence 
 against this is infinite. Quain has told us 4S 
 that the lines are clearly traced even before 
 a man is born ; and it is easy to verify the fact, 
 that the hands of women, and of men who 
 never use their hands in active exercises, are 
 always covered with lines, whereas the hands 
 of labourers and men who work hard with them, 
 are nearly always almost destitute of lines at 
 all. It is activity of brain, and not of body, that 
 causes the lines to appear ; otherwise, how ac- 
 count for lines between the joints of the fin- 
 gers, and in directions in which no folding 
 could ever, by any possibility, take place ? 
 
 No : the hands fold, it is true, upon some of 
 the major lines, but the lines are not caused by 
 the folding. However, let us get on. Why 
 seek to account for facts, which, being existent, 
 need no proof? Let us accept the axiom laid 
 down by Herbert Spencer, by Henry Drum- 
 
 45 Quain's Anatomy, vol. ii. p. 214.
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 9! 
 
 mond, and by a host of the finest intellects of 
 the day, that all science is more or less a mys- 
 tery. 46 We can only tabulate facts, and, after 
 letting them speak for themselves, draw our 
 own deductions. I have advanced all the data 
 that can be necessary, in the introductory argu- 
 ments to my two larger works upon this science. 
 Now I propose to lay before you what actually 
 is the case, in the hope that you will not refuse 
 to believe acknowledged truth, as did the hard- 
 headed scientists of even so late as the end 
 of the last century, who denied that aerolites 
 either had fallen or could fall. This is not a 
 superstition, this science of mine. But, if it 
 were, superstition will only come to an end 
 when exact science if such exists will take 
 the trouble to examine without prejudice the 
 facts it has hitherto distinctly denied ; that is to 
 say, when it will approach them with the admis- 
 sion that things are not necessarily untrue be- 
 cause they are unexplained ! 
 
 It is necessary to say, at the outset of the 
 study of this branch of the science of chei- 
 rosophy, that the names of the planets applied 
 
 46 Compare these passages: Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology 
 (London, 1873), chap, iv., and Henry Drummond's Natural Law in 
 the Spiritual World (London, 1884), pp. 28 and 88.
 
 92 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 to the mounts and some of the lines of the palm 
 are not astrological. When I speak of the mount 
 of Jupiter, the plain of Mars, and the line of 
 Saturn, I do not mean that the planets have 
 as has been believed, and, I regret to say, writ- 
 ten any thing to do with those parts of the 
 hand. The explanation of these terms is, that 
 on certain parts of the hand are found the indi- 
 cations of certain temperaments, which we have 
 come to look upon as peculiar to certain deities 
 of the heathen mythology : so that when I say 
 the mount of Venus, I mean that part of the 
 hand upon which are found the indications of 
 love; the plain of Mars, the part denoting 
 audacity and warlike instinct ; the line of Saturn 
 indicates fate, and so on. 
 
 The five digits of the hand have, or may have, 
 at their bases, mounts ; i.e., little protuberances 
 of muscle, each of which has a certain signifi- 
 cation, and is called after a particular planet 
 (Plate IX.). They are as follows : under the 
 thumb, the mount of Venus (A) ; under the first 
 finger, the mount of Jupiter (B) ; under the 
 second, that of Saturn (C) ; under the third, that 
 of Apollo, or the Sun (D) ; under the fourth, that 
 of Mercury (E). Below this, on the hand, comes 
 the mount of Mars (F) ; below that, again, the
 
 Plate IX. -THE MOUNTS OF THE PALM.
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 95 
 
 mount of the Moon (G) ; and in the centre of 
 the hand, the plain of Mars (H). The hand is 
 crossed by six principal lines (Plate II.) : the 
 line of life, which surrounds the thumb (a a) ; 
 the line of head, which starts at the same point, 
 and goes to the mount of Mars (b b) ; the line of 
 heart, almost parallel above the line of head 
 (c c) ; the line of Saturn, or fortune, which goes 
 from the wrist to the mount of that name (dd] ; 
 the line of Apollo, or art, which goes from the 
 plain of Mars to the mount of Apollo (e e) ; and 
 the line of liver, or health, which goes from the 
 base of the line of life to the mount of Mars or 
 of Mercury (//). To these are added two in- 
 ferior sets of lines : the girdle of Venus, which 
 encircles the mounts of Saturn and of Apollo 
 (gg), and the rascettes, which appear at the 
 wrists (Ji Ji). These two latter are not invariably 
 found in the hands. 
 
 Every mount betrays certain characteristics 
 in a greater or less state of development, and 
 the mount which is highest in a hand gives 
 the keynote to the character of the subject. A 
 hand has seldom only one mount developed, and 
 any well-formed mount will modify the signifi- 
 cation of the principal one. Sometimes, instead 
 of being high in a hand, the mount is covered
 
 96 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 with lines (E, Plate IX.). This has the same 
 effect as high development, and makes a mount 
 the principal one in the hand. All the mounts 
 equally developed indicate an evenly balanced 
 mind, whilst no mounts at all betray a dull, 
 negative character. A mount displaced towards 
 another, instead of being immediately beneath 
 the finger, takes an influence from that mount 
 towards which it inclines. If, not only is it 
 absent, but a hollow occupies its place, it de- 
 notes the converse, the opposite, of the qualities 
 of the mount. 
 
 The lines in a hand should be clear, red, and 
 apparently marked, not ragged, or broken, or 
 indistinct. Pale lines in a hand indicate a 
 phlegmatic disposition, and, in a man, effemi- 
 nacy. A sister line following the course of 
 a principal line (/ / in Plate II.) will always 
 strengthen and support it. A tassel at the 
 end always indicates a disorder of the quality. 
 Ascending branches (a in Plate X.) always an- 
 nounce a favorable issue of the qualities of a 
 line; descending (b, Plate X.), the reverse. A 
 chained formation indicates obstacles and worries 
 connected therewith (c in Plate X.). 
 
 Beneath the first finger we find the mount of 
 Jupiter. The predominance of this mount in
 
 Plate X.-THE LINES AND MOUNTS.
 
 CHEIROMANCY OK PALMISTRY. 99 
 
 a hand denotes ambition, honor, gayety, and 
 religion. It also, if very high, denotes love of 
 pomp and ceremony, with a certain amount of 
 pride ; and in excess the mount gives tyranny, 
 arrogance, and ostentation ; if the fingers are 
 pointed, ostentation. Complete absence of the 
 mount betrays idleness, egoism, want of dignity, 
 and even vulgarity. Confused lines on the 
 mount indicate a continued and unsatisfied am- 
 bition. A cross on the mount denotes a happy 
 marriage (a in Plate XL). If a star be there 
 as well (b in Plate XL), the marriage is also 
 brilliant and ambitious. A spot on the mount 
 indicates disgrace. 
 
 The next mount is that of Saturn (c, Plate IX.). 
 When this mount is the highest in the hand, 
 we find in the subject caution, prudence, and a 
 fatality either for good or evil. Such subjects 
 are sensitive and punctilious, given to occult 
 science, to incredulity, melancholy, and timid- 
 ity. They love solitude and a quiet life, taking 
 naturally to agriculture, mineralogy, and kin- 
 dred sciences. Developed to excess, the mount 
 denotes a profound melancholy and morose taci- 
 turnity, remorse and morbid imagination, fear 
 of death, and, at the same time, a tendency 
 to suicide. Absence of the mount denotes an
 
 100 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 insignificant, uneventful disposition. A single 
 line on the mount signifies good luck; many 
 (c, Plate XI.) signify bad luck ; and a spot on 
 the mount denotes a great misfortune. Dis- 
 placed towards Jupiter, it argues a great good 
 fortune. 
 
 Under the third finger we find the mount of 
 the Sun. When it is prominent in a hand, it 
 argues a powerful love of art, and indicates suc- 
 cess, glory, brilliancy, good fortune, the results 
 of genius and intelligence. Such subjects are 
 inventors and imitators, prone to shortness of 
 temper, pride, eloquence, and a tendency to 
 religion. In excess, the mount indicates love of 
 wealth, extravagance, luxury, fatuity and envy, 
 quick temper and frivolity. These subjects are 
 also boastful and conceited. Absence of the 
 mount denotes dulness, and a complete absence 
 of the artistic instinct. A single line on the 
 mount denotes fortune and glory ; two lines (d 
 in Plate XI.) indicate talent, but probable failure 
 in life ; and a confusion of lines (e in Plate X.) 
 denotes a love of art as a science, and an ana- 
 lytical disposition. A spot on the mount always 
 announces a disgrace. 
 
 At the outside of the hand is the mount of 
 Mercury. Its prominence in a hand denotes
 
 Plate XL THE LINES AND MOUNTS.
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. IO3 
 
 science, spirit, eloquence, commercial capacity, 
 speculation, industry, invention, and agility. 
 Such subjects are always quick and clever at 
 occupations which require skill, and they are 
 selfishly good-natured; i.e., they are good to 
 their fellow-men when it amuses them to be 
 so, not when it goes against their inclinations. 
 Excess of the mount is very bad, denoting theft, 
 cunning, deceit, and treachery. Such subjects 
 are always charlatans, and prone to the more 
 evil forms of occultism and superstition. Com- 
 plete absence of the mount betrays inaptitude 
 for science, and no capacity for commerce. 
 Many lines on the mount (d, Plate X.) denote 
 science and eloquence ; little flecks and dashes 
 indicate a babbler and chatterer. Lines on the 
 percussion indicate liaisons and affairs of the 
 heart if horizontal (e, Plate XI.), children if 
 vertical. A marriage line terminated by a star 
 proves that the love-affair has terminated with a 
 death (f, Plate XI.). A great star crossing the 
 vertical lines on the percussion indicates steril- 
 ity. If the mount is quite smooth, it announces 
 extreme coolness and sang-froid. 
 
 Below this we have the mount of Mars (F, 
 Plate IX.), and the immediately contiguous part 
 of the palm is called the plain of Mars (H, Plate
 
 IO4 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 IX.). The mount denotes resistance, the plain 
 aggression. If the mount is prominent, you are 
 defensive rather than offensive ; if the plain is 
 developed, we find an aggressive, encroaching 
 spirit. A subject with the mount of Mars high 
 in the hand is cool-tempered, magnanimous, 
 and generous. If it is excessive, i.e., spreading 
 into the plain of Mars, he is furious, brusque, 
 cruel, violent, and defiant in manner. The 
 absence of the mount denotes cowardice and 
 childishness. 
 
 Lower still upon the hand we have the mount 
 of the Moon. This indicates imagination, poesy, 
 melancholy, a love of mystery, solitude, and 
 silence, and a tendency to revery. Such sub- 
 jects love harmony, rather than melody, in 
 music ; they are capricious, changeable, and in- 
 clined to be idle ; fond of voyaging, mystical, 
 and void of self-confidence or perseverance. In 
 a hard hand we get a dangerous activity and 
 imagination. Excess of the mount gives irrita- 
 bility, discontent, superstition, fanaticism, and 
 error; absence argues want of imagination and 
 of poetry in the disposition. Lines on the mount 
 (g, Plate XI.) give prophetic dreams, visions, pre- 
 sentiments, and the like. These are also shown 
 by a curved line extending to the mount of Mer
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 105 
 
 cury (/ in Plate X.). Horizontal lines from 
 the percussion (g in Plate X.) denote voyages ; 
 terminating in a star (Ji, Plate X.) these lines 
 indicate a voyage which will be terminated by 
 death. A large star on the mount (h, Plate XI.) 
 denotes hysteria, and, with other concomitant 
 signs, madness. Many crossing lines (i, Plate 
 XI.) betray self-torment and worry. An angle 
 or circle on the mount denotes a danger cf 
 death by drowning. 
 
 The last mount with which we have to deal 
 is that of Venus, at the root of the thumb. 
 This mount gives to a subject beauty, grace, 
 benevolence, melody in music (as opposed to 
 harmony), and, indeed, all the more feminine 
 attributes of character. Such people are great 
 lovers of and seekers after pleasure, are gay 
 and always charming. In excess, the mount 
 betrays debauchery, effrontery, license, incon- 
 stancy, and other excesses. Absence of the 
 mount shows coldness, laziness, and selfishness. 
 Lines on the mount always indicate warmth of 
 passion and strong affection. A line extending 
 to the line of head indicates a worry (j, Plate 
 XI.) ; extending to the mount of Mercury, it 
 denotes a marriage (k k in Plate XL), so does a 
 strong line coming from the phalanx of logic to
 
 106 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 the line of life (/ /, Plate XI.) which surrounds 
 the mount of Venus. Islands on the mount 
 (z, Plate X.) denote opportunities of marriage 
 which have been missed. 
 
 These are the interpretations of the mounts. 
 I shall conclude this opusculum by noticing the 
 principal lines and their significations. 
 
 The most important line in the hand is, of 
 course, the Line of Life (a a in Plate II.), which 
 surrounds the mount of Venus. Long, clear, 
 straight, and well-colored, it denotes long life, 
 good health, and a good character and disposi- 
 tion. Pale and broad, it indicates ill-health, 
 evil instincts, and a weak, envious disposition. 
 Thick and red, it betrays violence and brutality 
 of mind ; chained, it indicates delicacy ; and of 
 varying thicknesses, a capricious, fickle temper. 
 The ages at which events have happened to one 
 may be told by the points at which they have 
 marked the line ; for this purpose, it is divided 
 into segments of five and ten years, commen- 
 cing at the head of the line (Plate XII.), and 
 breaks and so on in the line indicate events at 
 the age at which the breaks occur. I have 
 treated of this subject very carefully in "A 
 Manual of Cheirosophy."
 
 Plate Xn.- AGES UPON THE LINES OF 
 LIFE AND FORTUNE,
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. IOO, 
 
 The shorter the line, the shorter the life ; and 
 from the point at which the line terminates in 
 both hands, may be accurately predicted the 
 time of death. A break in the line is always 
 an illness ; if in both hands, there is a grave 
 danger of death, especially if the lower branch 
 turn in towards the mount of Venus. Ceasing 
 abruptly with a few little parallel lines (j in 
 Plate X.), the death will be sudden ; a quantity 
 of little bars across the line (a in Plate XIII.) 
 denote continual but not very severe illnesses. 
 Broken inside a square (b, Plate XIII.), it is a 
 sign of a recovery from a serious illness, and a 
 bar across the broken ends (c, Plate XIII.) has 
 the same significance. However broken up the 
 line may be, a sister line (ii, Plate II.) will always 
 strengthen and mend it, and is a sign of excel- 
 lent good fortune. A tassel at the end (d, Plate 
 XIII.) is a sign of poverty in old age; and a ray 
 going to the mount of the Moon (e, Plate XIII.) 
 signifies that the head will be affected by these 
 troubles. 
 
 Rays across the hand from the mount of 
 Venus (J k, Plate XI.) always denote worries, 
 and the age at which they occur is shown by 
 the point at which the rays terminate. Their 
 variation is infinite, and I have discussed them
 
 110 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 fully elsewhere. At the present moment I can- 
 not do more or less than refer to them. 
 A ray ascending to the mount of Jupiter (/, 
 Plate XIII.) indicates success attained by merit 
 with lofty aims, ambition, and egoism. Branches 
 ascending from the line (a, Plate X.) denote 
 ambition, and nearly always riches. 
 
 If the three lines are all joined together (h, 
 Plate XIII.), it indicates grave danger of misfor- 
 tune and sudden death. If, on the contrary, 
 the line of head, instead of being joined to, is 
 separated from the line of life (k, Plate X.), it 
 indicates carelessness, extreme self-reliance, and 
 generally foolhardiness in consequence. 
 
 An island in the line of life (m, Plate XL) is 
 generally an indication of some mystery as re- 
 gards the birth of the subject, or else an illness 
 during the years which it covers. 
 
 The Line of Llead, which is the next great line 
 in the hand, should be clear and well colored, 
 extending from the beginning of the line of life 
 to the base of the mount of Mars, without fork, 
 break, or ramification. Pale and broad, it de- 
 notes feebleness or lack of intellect ; short, it 
 argues a weak will; chained, lack of fixity of 
 mind ; very long and thin, it denotes treachery 
 and avarice. A long line of head gives domi-
 
 Plate XIII.- THE LINES.
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 113 
 
 nation and self-control to a character ; if it starts 
 from the line of life under the mount of Saturn, 
 it shows that the education has been acquired 
 comparatively late in life, having been neglected 
 in early youth. Such subjects are generally 
 benevolent, and are generally great theorists. 
 Stopping under the mount of Saturn is a sign 
 of a sudden check to the intellectual develop- 
 ment in early youth. Joined closely to the line 
 of life for some distance at its commencement, 
 it indicates timidity and want of self-confidence 
 in a weak hand, caution and circumspection in 
 a strong one. 
 
 Declining upon the mount of the Moon, it is 
 a strong sign of a wild imagination. Coming 
 very low (i, Plate XIII.), it leads to mysticism 
 and folly, often culminating in madness, to 
 which there is a strong tendency. In a strong 
 hand it gives a talent for literature ; but in 
 a weak one, if it terminates in a star, with 
 a star on the Mount of Saturn, it is a sign of 
 hereditary madness. Turning up towards the 
 line of heart (n, Plate XL), it denotes a person 
 with a weak mind, who lets his heart and pas- 
 sions domineer over his reason. If it touch the 
 line of heart, it is a sign of an early death. A 
 break in the line indicates an accident to the
 
 IJ4 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 head, especially under the mount of Saturn ; 
 under these circumstances, the break has been 
 said to be a sign that the subject will be hung. 
 Ragged, it denotes a bad memory. Forked at 
 the end, with one of the " prongs " descending 
 towards the mount of the Moon, is a sure indi- 
 cation of hypocrisy, lying, and deceit, (/, Plate 
 X.). Such subjects are clever sophists, always 
 on their guard, and ready with excuses when 
 necessary, reflecting that necessity is the mother 
 of invention. With a good line of Apollo, it is 
 a sign of great talent. If one "prong" go up 
 to the line of heart, it is the indication of a fatal 
 love-affair. A cross and a break in the line (/, 
 Plate XIII.) are a sure prognostic of a violent 
 death. An island on the line (k, Plate XIII.) is 
 a sign of acutely sensitive nerves. A star (a, 
 Plate XII.) is a sign of a wound. A ray going 
 to Jupiter (/, Plate XIII.) betrays extreme ego- 
 ism, and consequent good luck. 
 
 The next line is the Line of Heart. It should 
 extend clear, well traced, and of a good color, 
 from the mount of Jupiter to the base of that 
 of Mercury. According to the length of the 
 line we find stronger or weaker affections. If 
 it goes right across the hand, from side to side, 
 it indicates excessive affection, resulting in a
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 115 
 
 morbid jealousy. If it is chained (c, Plate X.), 
 the subject is an inveterate flirt ; bright red, 
 it denotes violence in affairs of the heart ; pale 
 and broad, on the contrary, it indicates a cold- 
 blooded rout if not a worn-out libertine. Very, 
 very thin and bare, it is a sign of murder. 
 Turning up and disappearing between the first 
 and second fingers (o, Plate XL), it indicates a 
 long life of unremitting labor. Broken up, it is 
 a sign of inconstancy, and often of misogyny. 
 Forked, with one ray of the fork going on to 
 the mount of Jupiter (;//, Plate X.), is a lucky 
 sign of great good fortune, and of subsequent 
 riches; it also indicates enthusiasm in love, 
 while spots on the line denote conquests in 
 love, and according to the mount under which 
 you find the spot you can tell the nature of the 
 person with whom the love-affair has taken 
 place. Turning clown to the line of head is a 
 sign of an unhappy marriage, or of very deep 
 griefs of the heart. Lines ascending from that 
 of the heart (b, Plate XII.) show curiosity, re- 
 search, and versatility, but very often useless- 
 ness. 
 
 The fourth great line in the hand is that of 
 Saturn, or of Fortune, which rises through the 
 whole hand, from the wrist to the mount of
 
 Il6 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 Saturn. It may start from the wrist (/, Plate 
 XIII.), from the line of life (m, Plate XIIL), or 
 from the mount of the Moon, (n, Plate XIIL). 
 If it start from the line of life, it shows that 
 one's fortune results from one's own deserts; 
 rising from the wrist, it is always a sign of 
 good luck ; and starting from the mount of the 
 Moon, the fortune comes entirely from a caprice, 
 generally of the opposite sex. Sometimes it 
 turns off, and goes to some other mount, instead 
 of to that of Saturn : thus, if to Mercury, we 
 3nd success in commerce, eloquence, and sci- 
 ence ; if to Apollo, fortune from art ; if to Jupi- 
 ter, satisfied pride and realized ambition. If 
 the line cut through the mount, and extend 
 on to the finger (a, Plate XIIL), we get a great 
 fatality, which is either good or bad, according 
 to the general appearance of the hand. If the 
 line of fortune is stopped at that of head, it 
 shows that an impulse of the head, or error of 
 calculation, has stopped one's fortune ; stopped 
 at the line of heart, the ill-luck results from a 
 love-affair. 
 
 Twisted or ragged at the base, it indicates ill 
 luck in early life. Split and twisted through- 
 out, it denotes ill luck and ill health through 
 abuse of pleasure ; or, at any rate, continual
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 1 1/ 
 
 quarrels arising therefrom. An irregular line 
 betrays irritability; cut by little lines on the 
 mount (p, Plate XIII.), it indicates misfortune 
 late in life. Forked at the base, the life is a 
 continual struggle of ambition and of love ; both, 
 however, will be successful and fortunate, if the 
 line go well up to the mount. Any cross upon 
 the line (;/, Plate X.) indicates a change in the 
 life or in the position of the subject. A star 
 at the base of the line (o, Plate X.) shows a 
 misfortune in early youth, happening probably 
 to one's parents ; especially if there is also a 
 cross on the mount of Venus (/, Plate X.), 
 when the misfortune arises through the death 
 of a relation. 
 
 An island on the line of fortune (q, Plate X.) 
 nearly always betrays a conjugal infidelity ; and 
 if a star appear on the mount, it has brought 
 great misfortune in its train. A malformed line 
 with an island at its base is a sign of illegiti- 
 macy. If, however, the rest of the hand is 
 good, this island only shows a hopeless passion; 
 if with a star on Jupiter, the passion has been 
 for some celebrated or exalted person. 
 
 Less important than these last four, but not 
 less interesting, is the Line of Apollo, or Bril- 
 liancy (e e, Plate II.), which rises from the plain
 
 Il8 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 of Mars, or the mount of the Moon, and goes 
 to the mount of Apollo. Whenever it is pres- 
 ent to any marked degree, we find glory, celeb- 
 rity, art, wealth, merit, and success. It is 
 best when it is neat and straight, making a 
 clear cut upon the mount. Such subjects have, 
 in all their successes, the calmness of natural 
 talent, and the contentment of a proper self- 
 esteem. It must always appear more or less 
 in a lucky hand. If, however, the fingers are 
 twisted, and the palm is hollow, it is a bad thing 
 to have this line in the hand, for these indica- 
 tions show an ill use of the talents denoting it. 
 If it is absent from a hand, it denotes failures in 
 the undertakings of the subject. Visible, but 
 much broken up, it denotes a jack-of-all-trades, 
 and betrays an eccentricity in matters artistic. 
 Many little lines on the mount (e, Plate X.) de- 
 note an excess of the artistic qualities which 
 bring the subject to naught. If the line is 
 equally divided on the mount (d, Plate XL), it 
 shows that the subject has two counterbalan- 
 cing artistic instincts ; if, however, the line forms 
 a trident (g, Plate XIIL), it is a sure sign of 
 glory and of success. Cross lines on the mount 
 (c, Plate XII.) signify obstacles to the success in 
 art. A star at the top of the line is a sign of
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 1 19 
 
 great good fortune. A black spot at the junc- 
 tion of the lines of heart and of Apollo indi- 
 cates blindness. 
 
 The Line of Liver, or Health (//, Plate II.), 
 comes from the base of the line of life, and goes 
 towards but seldom as far as the mount of 
 Mercury. Clearly traced, it seldom exists in a 
 hand ; but when it is found, it is a sign of good 
 health, gayety, and success, with long life if the 
 line extend up to the mount of Mercury. Com- 
 plete absence of line, far from being a bad sign, 
 gives to a subject great vivacity both of man- 
 ner and of conversation. Any unevenness of 
 color in the line denotes bad health; much 
 twisted, it is a sign of biliousness ; much broken 
 up, of a weak or disordered liver. Forked at 
 the top, it gives a great capacity for occult 
 sciences (d, Plate XII.). A coming sickness 
 marks itself on this line by a little deep-red 
 cross-ray ; a past sickness leaves a gap. Well 
 joined to the line of head, it betokens a strong 
 aptitude for all kinds of natural magic or psy- 
 chology. An island in the line (e, Plate XII.) 
 denotes a somnambulist. 
 
 Of the girdle of Venus (gg, Plate II.), we can 
 dispose in a few words. Wherever you find it 
 in a hand, it is a sign of hysteria and emotion.
 
 I2O PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 You may generally look upon it as a bad sign, 
 for these qualities in a bad or weak hand lead 
 very frequently to the lower forms of vice ; but 
 this is not invariable, especially if, instead of 
 being a complete semicircle, it goes off on the 
 mount of Mercury (;/ n, Plate XIII.), when it 
 becomes merely a sign of great energy and 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 If the girdle is much broken up, it is an in- 
 dication of the lower passions of our natures ; 
 and as I have discussed the question in A Man- 
 ual of Cheirosophy, there is no need to allude to 
 it here. The curious are referred to that vol- 
 ume upon the point. 
 
 On the wrist are found certain lines which 
 are known as the Rascettes, or Bracelets of Life 
 (h h in Plate II.). Each of these represents from 
 five and twenty to thirty years of life. The 
 general maximum is three of these lines ; and 
 when clearly traced, they denote health, good 
 luck, and a tranquil life. Chained, the rascettes 
 indicate a laborious but fortunate life ; very 
 badly formed, the lines are an indication of 
 extravagance. Broken in the centre, and turn- 
 ing up towards the line of fortune (r, Plate X.) 
 is a sign of vanity and of deceit. A star in the 
 centre of the rascette (s, Plate XIII.) is nearly
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 121 
 
 always a sign of unexpected good fortune. 
 Lines extending from the wrist to the mounts 
 always betoken long voyages and good luck. 
 
 These are the lines of the palms, as far as it 
 is possible for us to go into them. There exist, 
 of course, in every hand, lines which do not 
 come under any of these rules ; but the expert 
 in cheirosophy will have no difficulty in reading 
 these by reference to their position in the hand 
 with regard to the mounts and the principal 
 lines. 
 
 As to the signs which are to be found in 
 the hands, I have alluded to them from time 
 to time during the foregoing remarks, and their 
 significance will have been more or les"5 gath- 
 ered. 
 
 A star is always an indication of some great 
 event beyond our own control, it may be either 
 good or bad ; but it is generally the latter. 
 
 A square is always protection from some 
 great danger ; a spot is generally, if not inva- 
 riably, a malady ; the island is always a mystery, 
 something secret, and generally a disgraceful' 
 circumstance, connected with the line upon 
 which it is found. A triangle (/, Plate XII.) 
 is a symbol of a science.
 
 1 22 PRACTICAL ' CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 A cross is seldom favorable, signifying gener. 
 ally an obstacle ; but at the same time, it usually 
 highly accentuates the qualities of the mounts 
 and lines on which it is found. A cross, by-the- 
 bye, in the quadrangle, i.e., the space between 
 the lines of head and of heart, the consideration 
 of which the limits of space have compelled 
 me to omit (s in Plate X.), is always a sign 
 of superstition, and of a penchant to occult 
 science. 
 
 Cross lines on a mount (c, Plate XII.) are 
 always an obstacle to that mount, and accen- 
 tuate its bad qualities. 
 
 In the foregoing remarks, I have endeavored 
 to give you a short outline of some of the inter- 
 esting points to be noted in connection with 
 our hands. To hear the science ridiculed, I am 
 perfectly prepared. It was the word "absurd," 
 says Balzac, which condemned steam, which con- 
 demned the inventions of gunpowder, printing, 
 spectacles, engraving, and, more recently, aerial 
 navigation, and photography. The self-compla- 
 cent stolidity of lazy incredulity is invincible ; 
 but people who laugh at the science are, to the 
 possessors of this knowledge, like the people in 
 the gallery at a theatre, who can find no means
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 123 
 
 of expressing their disapproval save by whis- 
 tling and cat-calling. It is as if people who 
 were born blind laughed at people who could 
 see, not believing in the sense of sight. Nay, 
 more, it is the blindness of people who refuse 
 to see ; for here is the science, and any one 
 who will learn it may do so with the greatest 
 ease if he only have patience and intelligence. 
 
 There are even people who call it wicked ; as 
 if this intimate knowledge of one's fellow-men, 
 and the works of an omnipotent Creator, did 
 not tend to raise the hearts of men. They say 
 it is wicked to go beyond the limits which 
 nature has set upon our knowledge. They 
 might as well condemn as wicked the use of 
 spectacles, of telescopes, of microscopes, and of 
 all instruments which tend to enlarge the field 
 of our research. But I quote once more the 
 words of Sir Richard Owen : " Our thoughts are 
 free to soar, as far as any legitimate analogy 
 may seem to guide them rightly, across the 
 boundless ocean of unknown truth." 
 
 The acquisition of this science is a vast sys- 
 tem of mental training ; in its research it covers 
 a vast historical and archaeological field, and ed- 
 ucates the mind to new and more acute habits 
 of observation. What is more necessary to us
 
 124 PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 than that our first indelible impression of a 
 man should be the right one ? And, by means 
 of this science, I claim that we are able at a 
 glance to comprehend the mental development 
 of whose-soever hands we are able to see. It is 
 not, of course, sufficient to buy a book, and read 
 it up ; especially not the ancient ones of which 
 I have placed a bibliography at the end of " The 
 Science of the Hand." The science must be 
 continually practised, so that the comparative 
 size and development of a hand may be seen 
 at a glance. The knowledge will soon come if 
 the exercise is continual, personal experiment, 
 said Coleridge, is necessary in order to correct 
 our own observation of the experiments which 
 Nature herself makes for us, which are the 
 phenomena of the universe. There must always 
 be, as I have said before, a certain amount of 
 mystery remaining; for all science is myste- 
 rious. Even the origin of muscular power and 
 animal heat, the existence of which we shall 
 hardly find any one to deny, are unknown and 
 mysterious. The more we investigate this sci- 
 ence, the clearer and the simpler it becomes ; 
 and even when we cannot exactly define the 
 cause, the invariable effect is such as to establish 
 cheirosophy as a fixed and exact science.
 
 CHEIROMANCY OR PALMISTRY. 12$ 
 
 You must be prepared to find in this, as in 
 all other sciences, occasional anomalies, contra- 
 dictions. These must not dismay you. You 
 will soon learn to profit as much by your fail- 
 ures as by your successes. 
 
 And with this, I have done. If I have suc- 
 ceeded in opening to you another page of the 
 great Book of Nature, I shall feel myself more 
 than repaid for the time which I have spent in 
 tabulating these few notes, too few, alas ! to 
 give you more than a very meagre idea of this 
 great science. And so I conclude. Let me 
 hope that I have made clearer to you the sim- 
 plicity, the beauty, and the enormous utilitariar 
 value of PRACTICAL CHEIROSOPHY. 
 
 IOTH MARCH, 1887.
 
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