The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-11-13


an three forms obey inspiration, and are
comparatively inapt for the mechanic arts.
The first proceeds by enthusiasm, the second
by stratagem the last by the prompting OF
pleasure.
palm moderately large, with smooth I'm
gers, feeble thumb, rather conical phalanges
that is, strong passions without sufficient
moral restraint-a mind wanting in power to
subiugate the senses, and based on ground
work of moderately intellectual ideas. Suchi is,
in general, the character of the artist.
THE PHLosormo HAND.
The other variety of the conical has fingers
knotted with the nail phalanges partly square,
partly conical. 1t indicates genius turned
towards speculative ideas, meditation, deep
philosophical science, and close, induotive
reasoning, love of absolute truth, poetry of
reason and thought.
The two classes into which D'Arpentigny
divides philosophers are the sensualists and
idealists. 1t is the old distinction as to ideas
being received by the senses from without or
within. Locke and Condillac have the pha-
Hanged fingers of the sensualists, and Des-
cartes, Malebranche, and Leibnitz have the
phalanges of the idealists. 1t is, however,
only the hand of the nationalist and sensualist
in its natural form that is dealt with, which
has palm moderately large and elastic, with
knotty fingers, the end phalange partly square,
partly conical, and forming, by reason of the
two knots, a kind OF ovoid spatule; the thumb
large, and indicating as much logic as decision
that is, formed OF two phalanges Of equal
length, or nearly so.
The philosophy of useful and spatulated
hands embraces facts, practical ideas, things,
politics; that of the coniCal and pointed hands,
creeds, speculative ideas, art; knotted hands,
partly square, partly conical are eclectic, and
1t is for this reason that they have received
the name OF philosophic hands. Very large,
all these hands tend to analysis; very small, to
synthesis. With a little thumb, they think
with the heart with large thumb, with the
head. 1t is with churchmen as with philoso-
pliers and artists. The knowledge and direction
of men belong to the northern types; of souls,
to the southern. To the former belong science
and learning to the latter, faith The one has
more love, the other more authority. The
spatules think of the world and the church;
the comics, of heaven and God.
THE PsYcHICAL HAND.
This last hand has smooth fingers termi-
mating in tapering cone. To it belongs con-
temptation, righteousness, ideality, careless
ness of material interests, poetry of the soul
and OF the heart, desire after all kinds of
beauty in form and in essence. Thus, to the
square and spatuled fingers God has given
matter and reality--that is to say, industry,
the necessary and useful arts, the theory of
things, the knowledge of facts, the high sci
ences; to the conical and pointed fingers, He
has opened the illimitabe field of Imagination;
to the conical, in giving them an insight into
the externally beautitul-art; to the pointed
fingers, intuition of the true and the beautiful
internally-poetry, and idealistic philosophy.
This is, of all others, the most beautiful and
the most rare for rarity is a condition of
beauty. 1t is small and fine, relatively to the
persOn; medium palm, the fingers without
knots, or very moderately undulated, the
outer pbaange long and filberted, the thumb
small and elegant; large, and with knots, it
has strength and combination, but 1T wants
simplicity.
You have seen the world given up to spa
tuled hands, progress, industry, war, tumult,
cultivation of power and material interests.
You have seen it committed to the artistic
hands, producing romantic enterprise, impru-
dence, brilliant folly splendid misery, and
fanaticism of form. You have seen it given
up to the square phalanges, fanaticism of me-
thod, narrow and universal despotism. You
have seen it given unto the philosophc hands,
the fanaticism Of science doubt emotion, and
liberty, without standing point. Alone hitherto
in Europe, the psychical hands have not been
able to arrive at dominion perhaps have ever
disdained, in the high sphere where their
genius dWells the material interests.
The psychical hands are immensely hume
rOus in Southern Asia; hence the genius essen
TALLY religious, contemplative, and poetical of
Jne nations that dwell there; hence their re-
spect for maxims, and their disdain for
methods; hence the preference they give to
virtue, the source of repOse-to science, the
source of progress; hence the langushing con-
dition of the arts, professions, and agriculture;
hence theOcratic and despotic governments,
forms necessary for people to whom reason
and action are painful. 1t is in dreamy Asia,
the land of immense empires, whence have
arisen all great religions and it is in restless,
laboriOus Europe, country of small republics,
whence have arisen all the philosophers that
have looked those religions in the face, and
have told them of their deeds. In Europe the
temple rises out of society, in Asia, society
rises out of the temple.
HANDS FOR MUSICIANS.
If there is any one art more than another, a
genius for which might be inferred from the
make of the hand it is evidently that of the
musician. A brilliant player must have a
hand adapted to his art. A man with short,
pudgy fingers, however much he may have the
soul of music within him, must forever remain
the "mute inglorious." A rigid attention to
measure being the necessary condition of musi-
cal rhythm, it is among the square fingers that
are found the most correct and skilled
musicians. Instrumentation belongs especially
to the spatuled fingers, and song to the pointed
The hand of the eminent pianist, List, being
very large, it is 10y finish; his fingers very
knOtty, it is by precision; his phalanges very
spatuled, it is by power, that he raises the
admiration of his audience.
His hand is. not only that of an instru-
mentalist, it is also that of a mathematician,
of mechanican, and by extension that of
is 20 say, of a man more