The Romans applied the term pollex truncatus to a person who, for the purpose of avoiding military service, cut off or mutilated his thumb—hence our word poltroon. It was by the position of the thumb that spectators determined the fate of conquered gladiators; if it were raised, life was spared, if it were depressed, it was a sentence of death. In the Anglo-Saxon laws, it is ordained that mutilation of the thumb shall be punished by a fine of twenty shillings, and that of the middle finger by a fine of four only. In La Vendée, a large thumb is still thought to be indicative of a dabbler in the forbidden mysteries of the black art. Biting the thumb was formerly held to be expressive of insult and defiance; thus Shakspeare in “Romeo and Juliet,”—
“Samson. I will bite my thumb at them; which is a
disgrace to them if they bear it.”
Fingers.—Having fully examined the palm and thumb, we have next to direct our attention to the four fingers—to their length, their general outline, the size of the joints, and the shape of the pieces of which the fingers are made up,—the phalanges, more especially of the terminal one.
Prominent joints evince great development of the bony and muscular structures of the hand; they indicate a motive and prehensive organ. Persons with such fingers, according to D’Arpentigny, are remarkable for their love of order and arrangement, for a mind prone to analysis and reasoning, and for actions regulated by the calm dictates of judgment, and not impelled by the sudden inspiration of enthusiasm. Smooth, even fingers, on the contrary, with a regular outline and articulations but slightly prominent, denote that the nervous system is more developed than the bony and muscular, and that the member is endowed with fine sensibility. Such an individual will be more or less swayed by imagination, will act rather from the impulse of the moment than from reason and experience, will be rather disposed to view things as a whole than to consider in detail their several parts,—in fact, will be furnished with a mind with more of imagination and synthetical talent than of reason or logical ability. The joints become more distinctly marked as age advances. In fine, says D’Arpentigny, “Man becomes the more orderly, the less credulous, and the more logical, in proportion as the articular prominences become more strongly defined.”
The last phalanx, or terminal piece of the fingers, may terminate in either of three ways. It may be rounded, cushiony, somewhat enlarged as it were; it may be square and flattened; or it may be delicate, tapering, and conical. The enlarged, rounded, cushiony-terminated phalanx, characterises “the doigts en spatule” of D’Arpentigny, or, as we shall term them, “sensitive fingers.” It indicates a great number of the delicate papillæ of touch, and serves to denote a sensitive hand. The square terminal phalanx mostly accompanies the motive and elementary form of hand; and the tapering, conical extremity, the psychical. It is a remarkable fact, that among all nations the figures of saints, angels, and divinities, should have been invariably figured with delicate, tapering fingers. The hands of witches, demons, and sorcerers, have likewise been delineated with elongated fingers; but they are rough, thin, and bony, and armed with long nails or claws, like the toes of the lower animals.
Nails.—We must say a few words upon the nails,—parts corresponding to the horny skeleton of invertebrate animals. They are sometimes long and narrow, as in the psychical hand: sometimes short and broad, as in the elementary type; and sometimes square and strong, as in the motive, or they may be brittle or thickened, or otherwise diseased. In consumptive people they become curved, somewhat claw-like. If the characters which they furnish be in accordance with those which are indicated by the other parts of the hand, they are thereby doubly confirmed; if the two differ, they mutually render each other less positive. Thus an elementary hand with long, slender nails, must be looked upon as having a decided tendency to assume a higher type of organisation, while if the nails be broad and short like the fingers, the signification is thereby the more confirmed.
FORM OF HANDS.
1.—The Elementary Hand. See [Plate I.]—Fingers thick, and without flexibility, palm large, thick, and hard, thumb rudimentary, and frequently bent somewhat backwards, skin coarse in its texture, nails short and thick. In countries where such hands abound, the people obey habit and instinct rather than reason. The sensations are dull and inactive, the imagination is without force, and the character apathetic; for the extremities of the nerves being deficient in sensibility, the impressions conveyed to the brain are wanting in intensity, and the ideas to which they give rise are consequently neither clear nor vivid. “Aux mains élémentaires, en Europe le labourage, le soin des étables et la longue suite des travaux grossiers auxquels suffisent les confuses lumières de l’instinct. A elles la guerre, en tant qu’il ne s’agit, que d’arroser machinalement de la sueur un sol étranger. Enfermées dans le monde matériel elles ne se rattachent guêre à l’ensemble politique, que par l’élément physique. Les convictions se ferment en elles dans une sphère inaccessible au raisonnement, et leurs vertus tiennent le plus souvent à des facultés négatives.”
Elementary hands abound in the north of Europe. The individuals characterised by them are always superstitious; witness the Lappes, the Finns, and the Icelanders. By misfortune they are overwhelmed. In India, where they do not naturally exist, they have been artificially produced in a particular caste—the Parias—by political and social institutions. They have been abundant among every people at the dawning of their civilisation; they raised the pyramids in Egypt and the Cyclopean structures in Italy, and are described as existing in a rude state of society in the literature of various nations: witness the Polyphemus of the Greeks, the Melibœus of the Latins, the Caliban of Shakspeare, and the Sancho Panza of Cervantes. This form of hand can unquestionably be produced by premature hard labour, but it is found among the upper classes likewise, where manual labour cannot be supposed to have given rise to it. Physiologically it must be looked upon as an arrest of developement, its main bulk, like the member of the lower animals and of the human fœtus, being made up of the solid palm. It must hence be regarded as a primitive form of the member, as a rudimentary, and consequently an imperfect organ.
Transitions from the elementary to other forms of hand are frequently met with. Thus, when the fingers become elongated and somewhat thinner, and the texture of the skin finer, the hand may be said to be intermediate between the elementary and sensitive type, while long, hard, bony fingers indicate an approach towards the motive type. And thus it is that intelligence is more readily to be attained by persons with elementary, than a fine sensibility by those furnished with a motive hand, or great energy in objective action by those provided with a sensitive.