The Mercurian Characteristics

Part 5

If the tip be square, then common sense and practical ideas alone will operate, and the subject will be a true Mercurian business man who makes every dollar tell in his expense account, and who does not brook any foolishness in business matters.

If the tip be spatulate, then great activity and energy will cause him to push business ventures without tiring, and the spatulate originality will enable him to devise new ways for making money.

This is a very strong combination. Knotty fingers will show that analysis and reason are strong in the subject. If the first knot alone be developed, it will show order and system in his ideas. If the second alone be developed, he will be neat in personal appearance and in everything about him. With both knots he will have the analysis of the philosopher added to the Mercurian quickness and shrewdness.

If this subject be an orator he will write his speeches and commit them; if he be a lawyer he reasons out every case for his client. If a doctor he does not diagnose by intuition but by reasoning from cause to effect and per contra. If a business man he does everything by a system, and after careful thought.

Smooth fingers will add impulse and intuition to an already very quick subject, and with his ability to read human nature he is unusually keen and intuitive. His estimates of those he meets are seldom wrong, and he should always trust to first impressions. He loves beauty and is artistic in all of his ideas.

The tips must be considered with all these fingers, adding conic, square, or spatulate qualities to the knotty or smooth, and making the philosophical orimpulsive tendencies more or less pronounced according to the degree of development in which they are found. Long fingers show that the subject will go into the minutiae of everything.

If he be a speaker he will describe every detail of any subject on which he is talking. If he be a lawyer he will hunt every bit of testimony that can bear on his case, and will prepare his petitions and papers with the greatest care; will have the records in his cases exact, every exception noted so that he can appeal if beaten. If he be a doctor he does not neglect a detail in the treatment of his patients, attends to diet, hygiene, air in the room, and is in everything most careful.

As a business man he is constantly going over everything in his place of business. Not a thing escapes him, and no detail is omitted that can add to the result he wishes to accomplish, viz., money-making. He adds the suspicion of long fingers to Mercurian suspicion, and the long-fingered neatness to Mercurian tidiness; thus he is a most pronounced specimen.

If he be a talker he is very tiresome. Short fingers add their quickness and action to a subject already remarkably quick, consequently knots are needed on these fingers to reduce the quickness if it is not to be a positive menace. Impulse, inspiration, intuition, and a train of kindred qualities encompass the short-fingered Mercurian, and he is volatile and spontaneous in the highest degree.

The orator relies on the spur of the moment for his material, the lawyer acts by inspiration and shrewdness, the doctor seems to diagnose by intuition, and does not always know why. They are correct in all these estimates, however, for which they must thank the Mercurian type. The short-fingered business man at once makes up his mind as to the credit of a customer, the honesty of an employee, or whether his business cannot be improved by some change in methods.

All of these quick ideas which flash into his mind he puts into immediate execution. With short fingers note the tips. Added quickness will be given by conic tips, and reduced, by square or spatulate. The tips will also tell whether conic, square, or spatulate qualities will operate. The thumb if low set, will tell of advanced mentality, if high set a decrease. By its size, whether head or heart will dominate, and by its shape whether a fine or coarse nature is present.

The thumb of the Mercurian has a tendency to be stiff, for he loves money, and while generous to his family and free to spend money for things that he enjoys, he does not do it with a lavish hand. The first phalanx, by its length, tells of the power of will in the subject, whether he will carry out his schemes or merely plan and let them drop. The conic first phalanx will show how impressionable he is, the square or spatulate that he is practical, original, and firm.

The clubbed thumb on a Mercurian is a doubly bad indication. The second phalanx of the thumb will tell of the logic and reasoning faculty back of your subject, and whether it is stronger or weaker than the will which should carry it into operation.

By its shape it will show whether commonness or refinement is present. This latter formation with a Mercurian is usually expected. In the largest number of cases the thumb will be found with a large first phalanx, square or paddle-shaped, a long second phalanx with a waist-like formation. This combination will tell of strong will and refined reason back of a very shrewd specimen of humanity.

The Mercurian is a many-sided fellow. He can be either the best or the worst of all.

He is the type to which we look for shrewdness, keenness, diplomacy and skill, energy and success. But this type contains the polished villain, the bank wrecker, the hypocrite, the burglar, or the petty liar and thief. Use great care when you find one, that he may be put into the proper class.

He is up to all possible tricks and schemes to fool the unwary, and will tax your skill as fully as any type you may have to handle. Take time in the examination of this type, do not be hurried, bring to bear everything upon him from the texture of his skin to his thumb, and you can accurately classify him, and determine his grade in the class. Some of the most honest men I have ever seen are Mercurians, and the reverse is also true.

The low thieves you will easily discover, the polished, hypocritical villain is harder to unmask.