ON THE CUSTOM OF KISSING HANDS.
M. Morin, a French academician, has amused himself with collecting several historical notices of this custom. I give a summary, for the benefit of those who have had the honour of kissing his majesty's hand. It is not those who kiss the royal hand who could write best on the custom.
This custom is not only very ancient, and nearly universal, but has been alike participated by religion and society.
To begin with religion. From the remotest times men saluted the sun, moon, and stars, by kissing the hand. Job assures us that he was never given to this superstition, xxxi. 26. The same honour was rendered to Baal, 1 Kings xix. 18. Other instances might be adduced.
We now pass to Greece. There all foreign superstitions were received. Lucian, after having mentioned various sorts of sacrifices which the rich offered the gods, adds, that the poor adored them by the simpler compliment of kissing their hands. That author gives an anecdote of Demosthenes, which shows this custom. When a prisoner to the soldiers of Antipater, he asked to enter a temple.—When he entered, he touched his mouth with his hands, which the guards took for an act of religion. He did it, however, more securely to swallow the poison he had prepared for such an occasion. He mentions other instances.
From the Greeks it passed to the Romans. Pliny places it among those ancient customs of which they were ignorant of the origin or the reason. Persons were treated as atheists, who would not kiss their hands when they entered a temple. When Apuleius mentions Psyche, he says, she was so beautiful that they adored her as Venus, in kissing the right hand.
The ceremonial action rendered respectable the earliest institutions of Christianity. It was a custom with the primæval bishops to give their hands to be kissed by the ministers who served at the altar.
This custom, however, as a religious rite, declined with Paganism.
In society our ingenious academician considers the custom of kissing hands as essential to its welfare. It is a mute form, which expresses reconciliation, which entreats favours, or which thanks for those received. It is an universal language, intelligible without an interpreter; which doubtless preceded writing, and perhaps speech itself.