The science of the hand, or, The art of recognising the tendencies of the human mind by the observation of the formations of the hands = la science de la main / translated from the French of C.S. D'Arpentigny and edited ... by Ed. Heron-Allen ; with original plates and explanatory diagrams by Rosamund Brunel Horsley.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science of the hand, or, The art of recognising the tendencies of the human mind by the observation of the formations of the hands = la science de la main / translated from the French of C.S. D'Arpentigny and edited ... by Ed. Heron-Allen ; with original plates and explanatory diagrams by Rosamund Brunel Horsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    do not think there are to be found—as there are in the newer cheiromancy,—traces of a long-disused cultus, an old idea, as Longfellow says in ''Hyperion^' folded in a new garment, which looks you in the face and pretends not to know you, though you have been familiar friends from child- hood. In vain has Desbarrolles endeavoured to surround this branch of the science with a proto- plasm of gnostic mysticism by devoting several pages [275-282] of his book to a process of what he calls enriching the system of M. d'Arpen- tigny by means of the Kabbala. When, how- ever, he tabulates the cheirognomical indications of the seven cardinal sins, he becomes interesting, and when in his larger and more recent volume, Suite et Fin (Paris : 1879), he gives a few pages on how to put the science rapidly into practice [p. 90], he becomes most valuable, and I can warmly recommend a perusal of those pages to all who are interested in the subject-matter of this volume. It will be noticed, as M. Desbarrolles has remarked \yide p. 420], that our author, being of Bacon's opinion that it is good to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with teUing of opinions, and jest with earnest, betrays a continual tendency to fly off at a tangent and talk delightfully and interestingly about some- thing else concerning which he has somewhat to say, with the natural result that he frequently loses and frequently repeats himself. I have endeavoured, by appending an extremely full index, to reduce as far as possible the irritation resulting from this state of things, which the