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. By and self. Man’s own large man is completely unpredictable to him- 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 a war which seems to it inevitable. for the future, dreading The thought of chaos and death part of every European youth. In Asia the dam has already burst, and men are senselessly murdering each other. is Statesmanship has proved itself a self-seeking Frankenstein. Per- haps it is now time for scientists to take the helm instead of states- men and come generals. Man has to understand them. lost his fear of What he most thunderstorms as he has fears now is his fellows. I believe that with complete understanding of himself that fear too would disappear. It seems to me that 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 day Carrel, Jeans, Eddington, Einstein, Huxley, Russell about the some dom Of own salvation. Finding the scientific leaders of this concerned human race gives promise that such a brotherhood may time be realized. In that promise, I believe, lies eventual free- men from subjection to their fellows. we have had students of man in the past, but to for the majority of course, date they have divided their subject into at least two separate parts. The first part, which took in the physical aspect of man, has made considerable headway, though, compared with the degree of cer-INTRODUCTION 3 too is still in its tainty which governs other scientific studies, this his of man’s The second mentality, per- study division, infancy. sonality, consciousness, psyche you can call it what you will is very far behind. for the lag, it seems to me, is that the division into mental and compartments is an artificial one. Man is a physical whole who acts and reacts as a whole. There is no physician who will deny the interrelation between his patient’s spirits and his recovery One reason from a dangerous mit the let names illness. There is no psychologist who will not ad- a disease on the behavior of his subject. effect of Why then psychology, physiology, biology prevent us from like considering man as an entity? Instead of regarding the “mental” and “physical” as two dis- tinct things, many modern scientists are uniting them. The leaders man as parts of one inte- the of which some have called “psychobiology,” study grated whole, a combined science of man’s mental and physical being. To this new of scientific thought see both aspects of 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. There is still another thing we can learn from the exact sciences. In their conclusions, scientists make use of all the 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 in- stincts. Others claim that diet alone makes the man. not look Why at all the evidence? It was with some such idea that hand hands I began to write this book about a comprehensive study of man, the study of his certain, play a part. analysis. In will, I am unfortunate that this subject has for so long been associated with charlatanry and fortune telling. Most of us think of crystal It is gazing and reading hands as very much the same thing. I myself began my study of hands in a spirit of skepticism. In the first place,INTRODUCTION 4 palmistry, as I then thought of it, was associated with the death of best friend, a young fellow-officer in the Austrian army. Con- my sequently, I not only doubted that there was anything to handread- ing, but I very much resented its pretensions. friend and I were on leave from front line warfare in 1917. My lark, he proposed taking me to a university professor who read hands as a hobby. I laughed at the idea, but we went. Almost the first words of this student of hands were that he saw As a fear of death indicated in indication was repeated early death of my my in friend’s hand more than both hands, the old man that, as the predicted the friend. became angry. “A safe prediction for you old men sitting at home,” I told him. “What one of us in the trenches does not fear death? And for how many of us can you not foretell the end within a very short time? Tell me, have I also a week?” I The old man looked at my hand. “No,” he said. “You will live a long time. You will have many narrow escapes, it is true, many ad- ventures. You will meet the great men of this age, travel all over the world.” Going back on duty I was still bitter about the professor’s remark my friend. Of course, there was nothing in the hocus-pocus, but what a thing, I thought, to tell an eighteen-year-old boy going back that he would die in a few days! into the hell of trench warfare to Two days later my friend was dead. Almost miraculously, I escaped not only that time but again and again, though I was severely wounded. Coming out of the hospital, I was reassigned from the Galician front lines to the Austrian army of occupation in a Ukrainian border town. But that status was not to last long. In those historic times of 1918, armies and empires were disintegrating. I found myself de- serted by my own men, completely out of touch with headquarters. was hardly conducive to the long life which had been promised me, but I took what steps I could to safeguard myself. In a peasant cart I set out for the town in which divisional head- one. quarters were located. The route to be traveled was a dangerous tired of deserters was beset the roving men, by country Everywhere The situation organized slaughter, wandering about, preaching revolution. An offi-INTRODUCTION cer’s more 5 uniform was not a recommendation for their clemency. Even of a menace to travelers were the bandits who were picking the country’s already bare skeleton. My finally cart safely passed through fell into the Even now into the woods. At the time I two or three groups of foragers but I was dragged from the cart hands of another. I can recall the feeling of that beating. only hoped that they would continue to beat me into much they decided to be slow and unpleasant about killing me. They left me leaning against a tree, too tired even to hope for a insensibility so that I might not feel too if quick death, as all but one of them withdrew for supper. Dimly I could feel the world about me, the fading sunlight, the dancing shadows of the leaves, the evening chirruping of the birds. I remember being aware afraid. I was not even interested, do not only numbly of discomfort. hand wipe a trickle of blood out of my eye. The red sun, sinking, blended with the red blood on my hand, and every I raised my to every mark in my palm was etched in crimson. I raised my hand and stared at the outlines written in blood. From far off there came into my mind the memory of the professor’s forecast of a long life. That seemed to me a wonderful joke. I looked over at the line, men sitting about their fire and no doubt at moment planning my death. The joke became too much group of that very for me. I laughed out loud. guard looked at me in amazement. He called to the leader to what the madman was laughing at. Slowly the bearded cap- walked over and stared. I could not help it. I kept on rocking My find out tain and gasping with laughter “Are you crazy?” asked I explained. my The joke was captor. really too good to keep to myself. “See,” I said. “It is here written that I much good fortune before I die.” And am to live long again I went and have off into crazy laughter. Suddenly a movement from the captain caught had own my attention. He rough, dirt-cracked hand and was studying it curiously. Automatically, I still can’t explain why, I reached over raised hisINTRODUCTION 6 and seized his Words domination. it palm up and began to speak. a tale of greatness, of power, riches and came fast, without thought. I soon had an au- hand, I told the ragged turned man When the leader appeared satisfied with the glories I had found in his hand, he motioned for another to step forward and learn from my strange wisdom. dience. All night long in the dancing light of a small fire, I continued to look at hands and make up stories to go with them. Fatigue and everything else disappeared. I only saw hands and keep on talking. With day, the knew that I must men stopped their discussion of what I had told them and thought of food. They included me in their meal and then gathered to decide my fate. I was surprised when they offered me freedom and an escort to ensure my safety. Certainly there was very little in this experience to convince me of there being a scientific foundation for hand analysis. conclu- My sion was that people were would believe anything, even take a man fighting for his life. But my gullible, seriously the fantastic stories of was aroused. Later, as roving newspaper correspondent, I had many excellent opportunities to study the hands of almost every curiosity country’s outstanding personages. I determined to satisfy my curiosity. Since then, I have collected and studied more than ten thousand 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 collec- tion of handprints, feeling that the more examples I studied, the more certain I would be in conclusions. With a larger ana larger my sampling to go by, I felt that I could draw some conclusions from On the basis of probabilities derived from statistical averages, I could associate certain markings in the hand with certain my findings. characteristics in men and women. view is applied to the reading of hands, it seems the superstition and occultism of ancient palmistry can be discarded. There is then left a study which can be of great If this point of to me that all all sciences dealing with the study of man. Hand analysis should become a part, perhaps a very important part of the new value toINTRODUCTION 7 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-under- stood 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 and psychologists recognize that attempts often lead to speech defects, mental re- lefthandedness change tardation and even serious psychological maladjustments, especially in personality. Physicians to in children. Daily we are adding to the evidence that hands are all the other factors which make a human closely associated with 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 rather longer in the fingers than that of the European nations which migrated here. The American hand has a prominent ridge across the back. large The palm and and fingers tend to be hard and dry. The nails are well shaped. Perhaps even more than the shape of the hand, interest the anthropologist. I am its sure that there is language would a wealth of in- formation in the gestures and motions by which men supplement their spoken language. Why are the Latins so much more expansive in their gestures than the Anglo-Saxons? What determines the dif-INTRODUCTION 8 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? ferent motions The answers to own origins and these questions will surely throw some light on our functionings. I realize that this has become a long introduction, but the popular misconceptions about my subject call for much explanation. Palmis- try has occupied some of the most profound minds of the past. The Chaldeans, art. the Assyrians and Egyptians were devotees of the Ancient Chinese civilizations thought that hidden meanings and occult signs could be read in the lines of the hand. Athenian philoso- phers have left treatises on palmistry, both Plato and Aristotle having written on the subject. Roman emperors were among its practition- ers, 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 de- veloped 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 is still a pseudo-science retaining much that is inferen- rather than proven by experience. That however is unfortu- nately true of almost all the methods so far used in studying our- the subject tial selves. If this book succeeds at all in breaking through the superstitions which hide the true worth of hand analysis I shall feel that it has purpose. I should like, if nothing else, to arouse the who are better equipped than I to pursue the in its branches all and implications. I feel convinced that care- study ful scientific study of our hands has much to tell us. I look forward served its curiosity of those day when this will be acknowledged by all thoughtful men. Until that day, I can only hope that I have done a little to bring to the it nearer.

PART ONE Chapter Analysis and Interpretation