Introduction

SOME time ago, there was an eclipse of the sun which was predicted so many years ago, even before the birth of the scientists who would observe it.

Was this a case of clairvoyance? Was it a penetration of the future by some gifted seer who was trusted by the scientists?

No. It came from a detailed prediction of the exact path that the moon would take to create the eclipse.

Predictions are also done in other fields of science.

• Chemists can tell in advance the reaction that will be produced by combining two substances.
• Physicists will explain how soon and where a projectile, shot from a certain place, will hit.
• Engineers will inform you how many revolutions per minute to expect from a wheel as the power applied is increased or decreased.

In less learned circles, everyone is willing to embark on limited predictions about the everyday occurrences of our lives.

• We take for granted that night will be followed by morning.
• We assume that when we apply a match to an open gas jet the gas will ignite.
• We are not surprised when we drop a pencil to see it fall to the ground.

We translate a repeated occurrence into prediction.

The scientist does not go that far. His predictions are based on involved calculations that use of past observations.

He is not so certain as you that the sun will rise tomorrow, for his mathematical formulae express only its probability, not its certainty.

In practice, however, he is able to figure the exact shift from yesterday’s path, both in time and position, by which tomorrow’s sunrise will differ from yesterday’s.

Thus, the scientist makes predictions daily and has them accepted as valid both by his colleagues and by the general public.

Strangely enough, the one subject which scientists have not brought into conformity with their formulae of statistical averages is man himself.

Man is completely unpredictable. His own activities, his reactions, his thoughts, the various complex factors which make up the individual are today probably less understood than any other natural phenomenon.

The results of this course are evident everywhere. This era is characterized by a general breakdown.

In Europe, a whole generation lives from hand to mouth, making no plans for the future, dreading a war [the year is 1938] which seems inevitable.

The thought of chaos and death is part of every European youth.

In Asia the dam has already burst, and men are senselessly murdering each other.

Statesmanship has proved itself a self-seeking Frankenstein. Perhaps it is now time for scientists to take the helm instead of statesmen and generals.

Man has lost his fear of thunderstorms. What he feas most now is his fellows.

With complete understanding of himself, that fear too would disappear.

Science should revolt from its subservience to cruelty and greed and put itself at the service of the human race.

Its service would have to stem from complete understanding. Picture to yourself a great brotherhood of men of science intent on studying man for his own salvation.

Imagine Carrel, Jeans, Eddington, Einstein, Huxley, Russell concerned about the human race.

It gives promise that such a brotherhood might be realized, bringing freedom from subjection to their fellows.

Studies of man have been divided into at least two separate parts.

1. Anatomy

This studies the physical aspect of man. It has made considerable headway. But compared to the other sciences, this is still in its infancy.

2. Psychology

This is very far behind.

One reason for the lag is the division of man into mental and physical compartments.

Man is a whole who acts and reacts as a whole.

No physician will deny the interrelation between his patient’s spirits and his recovery from a dangerous illness.

No psychologist will deny the impact of disease on his patient’s behavior.

Why then do these sciences of psychology, physiology, biology prevent us from considering man as an entity?

Instead of regarding the “mental” and “physical” as two distinct things, many modern scientists are uniting them.

The leaders of scientific thought see both aspects of man as parts of one integrated whole, which some have called “psychobiology,” a combined science of man’s mental and physical being. To this new science they are bringing the methods of objective measurement which they use in the laboratory.

If plotting statistical probabilities has become the foundation of chemistry and physics, that coldly impersonal method can also be used in dealing with the science of human beings.

Scientists use of evidence presented.

In studying human beings, many of our theorists have built schools of thought around isolated sets of phenomena.

Behaviorists denied that anything but physical actions and reactions could be studied.

Freud placed us all in a half-world governed by repressed sex instincts.

Others claim that diet alone makes the man.

Why not look at all the evidence?

That is why I wrote this book of hand analysis.

In a comprehensive study of man, the study of his hands will play a part.

It is unfortunate that this subject has for so long been associated with charlatanry and fortune telling.

I got into palmistry when my best friend died.

He and I were on leave from front line warfare in 1917.

As a lark, he proposed taking me to a university professor who readhands as a hobby.

I laughed, but we went.

The professor’s first words was the early death indicated by my friend’s hand.

Going back on duty I was still bitter about the professor’s remark about my friend. Two days later my friend was dead.

Since then, I have collected and studied more than 10,000 handprints.

As I continued, I did become more and more convinced that the hand actually showed something of a man’s character, health, temperament and even his fate, at least to the extent that the last is affected by the other factors.

I continued to add to my collection of handprints, feeling that the more examples I studied, the more certain I would be in conclusions. With more samples, I could draw some conclusions from the basis of probabilities derived from statistical averages, I could associate certain markings in the hand with certain characteristics in men and women.

Based on this, all the superstition and occultism of ancient palmistry can be discarded.

Hand analysis should become a very important part of the new composite study, psychobiology.

The physician has already found the hands an aid in making diagnoses. In my opinion, he can make of them a very accurate index to certain ailments which manifest their symptoms in the skin, texture, nails, bones and palm of the human hand.

As for the psychologist, the study of hands provides him with a fund of information capable of being dealt with in a thoroughly scientific manner. Best of all, the hands, in my opinion, are a bridge by means of which we can join the physician’s, biologist’s and physiologist’s approach to his subject with that of the psychologist.

There are, for example, the endocrine glands, tiny, little-understood cells whose malfunctioning is registered by symptoms in the hands as well as by other physiological changes and also by profound changes in the mentality of a person, sometimes by complete shifts in personality. Physicians and psychologists recognize that attempts to change left-handedness often lead to speech defects, mental retardation and even serious psychological maladjustments, especially in children. Daily we are adding to the evidence that hands are closely associated with all the other factors which make a human being what he is.

To the anthropologists, the study of hands should be of special interest. The various races have not only characteristic facial and cranial variations, but also marked differences in their hands. The hands of Negroes are long and narrow. The northern white races have large, broad hands. Mongolians usually have hands medium to small in size with long, sinewy fingers.

Different nationalities also tend to develop characteristic hands. The composite which is known as American is developing a hand longer in the fingers than that of the European races which migrated here. The American hand has a prominent ridge at the base of the thumb, and fingers tend to be hard and dry. The nails are short and stiff.

Even more important than the shape of the hand, its language would interest the anthropologist. I am sure that there is a wealth of information in the gestures and motions by which one people express their thoughts. Why are the Latins so much more expressive in their gestures than the Anglo-Saxons? What determines the different motions by which individuals express the same thing?

What causes the habitual muscular response of one person or one nation to differ so markedly from another’s response to the same stimulus?

Popular misconceptions about my subject call for much explanation.

Palmistry has occupied some of the most profound minds of the past. The Chaldeans, the Assyrians, and Egyptians were devotees of the art.

Ancient Chinese civilizations thought that hidden meanings and occult signs could be read in the lines of the hand.

Athenian philosophers have left treatises on palmistry, both Plato and Aristotle having written on the subject.

Roman emperors were among its practitioners, and from ancient times to this day statesmen, kings, princes and adventurers have, before important ventures tested their luck by asking the aid of palmists.

Unfortunately the mystic and occult powers assigned to palmists almost from the beginning of time prevented study of the hands from developing into an exact science.

That it is capable of being so developed I am fully convinced. I have tried in this book to approach the subject from an entirely pragmatic point of view. I have wanted to strip hand analysis of all its false trappings of mysticism.

At best, the subject is still a pseudo-science retaining much that is inferential rather than proven by experiment. That there is unfortunately true of almost all the methods so far used in studying ourselves.

This book aims to break through the superstitions which hide the true worth of hand analysis.