Chapter CXCVIII

PETER HOPKINS' VIEWS OF ASTROLOGY. HIS SKILL IN CHIROMANCY, PALMISTRY, OR MANUAL DIVINATION WISELY TEMPERED.—SPANISH PROVERB AND SONNET BY BARTOLOME LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA.—TIPPOO SULTAN.—MAHOMETAN SUPERSTITION.—W. Y. PLAYTES' PROSPECTUS FOR THE HORN BOOK FOR THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE SIGNS OF SALVATION.

_Seguite dunque con la mente lieta,
Seguite, Monsignor, che com' io dico,
Presto presto sarete in su la meta._

LUDOVICO DOLCE.

Peter Hopkins had believed in astrology when he studied it in early life with his friend Grey; his faith in it had been overthrown by observation and reflection, and the unperceived influence of the opinions of the learned and scientific public; but there was more latent doubt in his incredulity than had ever lurked at the root of his belief.

He was not less skilled in the kindred, though more trivial art of Chiromancy, Palmistry, or Manual Divination, for the divine origin of which a verse in the Book of Job was adduced as scriptural proof; “He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may know his work.” The text appears more chiromantical in the Vulgate. _Qui in manu omnium hominum signa posuit._ Who has placed signs in the hand of all men. The uses of the science were represented to be such, as to justify this opinion of its origination: “For hereby,” says Fabian Withers, “thou shalt perceive and see the secret works of Nature, how aptly and necessarily she hath compounded and knit each member with other, giving unto the hand, as unto a table, certain signs and tokens whereby to discern and know the inward motions and affections of the mind and heart, with the inward state of the whole body; as also our inclination and aptness to all our external actions and doings. For what more profitable thing may be supposed or thought, than when a man in himself may foresee and know his proper and fatal accidents, and thereby to embrace and follow that which is good, and to avoid and eschew the evils which are imminent unto him, for the better understanding and knowledge thereof?”

But cautioning his readers against the error of those who perverted their belief in palmistry and astrology, and used it as a refuge or sanctuary for all their evil deeds, “we ought,” said he, “to know and understand that the Stars do not provoke or force us to anything, but only make us apt and prone; and being so disposed, allure as it were, and draw us forward to our natural inclination. In the which if we follow the rule of Reason, taking it to be our only guide and governor, they lose all the force, power and effect which they by any means may have in and upon us: contrariwise, if we give ourselves over to follow our own sensuality and natural dispositions, they work even the same effect on us—that they do in brute beasts.”

Farther he admonishes all “which should read or take any fruit of his small treatise, to use such moderation in perusing of the same that they do not by and by take in hand to give judgement either of their own, or other men's estates or nativities, without diligent circumspection and taking heed; weighing and considering how many ways a man may be deceived; as by the providence and discretion of the person on whom he gives judgement, also, the dispensation of God, and our fallible and uncertain speculation.” “Wherefore,” he continues, “let all men in seeking hereby to foresee their own fortune, take heed that by the promise of good, they be not elate, or high-minded, giving themselves over to otiosity or idleness, and trusting altogether to the Natural Influences; neither yet by any signs or tokens of adversity, to be dejected or cast down, but to take and weigh all things with such equality and moderation, directing their state of life and living to all perfectness and goodness, that they may be ready to embrace and follow all that which is good and profitable; and also not only to eschew and avoid, but to withstand and set at nought all evil and adverse fortune, whensoever it may happen unto them.”

Whoever studies the history of opinions, that is, of the aberrations, caprices and extravagancies of the human mind, may find some consolation in reflecting upon the practical morality which has been preached not only by men of the most erroneous faith, but even by fanatics, impostors and hypocrites, as if it were in the order of Providence that there should be no poison which had not also some medicinal virtue. The books of palmistry have been so worn by perusal that one in decent preservation is now among the rarities of literature; and it may be hoped that of the credulous numbers who have pored over them, many have derived more benefit from the wholesome lessons which were thus unexpectedly brought home to them, than they suffered detriment from giving ear to the profession of a fallacious art.

The lesson was so obvious that the Spaniards expressed it in one of their pithy proverbs, _es nuestra alma en nuestra palma._ The thought has been expanded into a sonnet by Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola, a poet whose strains of manly morality have not been exceeded in that language.

_Fabio, pensar que el Padre soberano
En esas rayas de la palma diestra
(Que son arrugas de la piel) te muestra
Los accidentes del discurso humano;
Es beber con el vulgo el error vano
De la ignorancia, su comun maestra.
Bien te confieso, que la suerte nuestra,
Mala, o buena, la puso en nuestra mano.
Di, quién te estorvará el ser Rey, si vives
Sin envidiar la suerte de los Reyes,
Tan contento y pacifico en la tuya,
Que estén ociosas para ti sus leyes;
Y qualquier novedad que el Cielo influya,
Como cosa ordinaria la recibes?_

Fabius, to think that God hath interlined
The human hand like some prophetic page,
And in the wrinkles of the palm defined
As in a map, our mortal pilgrimage,
This is to follow, with the multitude
Error and Ignorance, their common guides,
Yet Heaven hath placed, for evil or for good,
Our fate in our own hands, whate'er betides
Being as we make it. Art thou not a king
Thyself my friend, when envying not the lot
Of thrones, ambition hath for thee no sting,
Laws are to thee as they existed not,
And in thy harmless station no event
Can shake the calm of its assured content.

“Nature” says a Cheirologist, “was a careful workman in the creation of the human body. She hath set in the hand of man certain signs and tokens of the heart, brain and liver, because in them it is that the life of man chiefly consists, but she hath not done so of the eyes, ears, mouth, hands and feet, because those parts of the body seem rather to be made for a comeliness or beauty, than for any necessity.” What he meant to say was that any accident which threatened the three vital parts was betokened in the lines of the palm, but that the same fashioning was not necessary in relation to parts which might be injured without inducing the loss of life. Therefore every man's palm has in it the lines relating to the three noble parts, the more minute lines are only found on subjects of finer texture, and if they originally existed in husbandmen and others whose hands are rendered callous by their employments, they are effaced.

It was only cheirologically speaking that he disparaged what sailors in their emphatic language so truly call our precious eyes and limbs, not that he estimated them like Tippoo Sultan, who in one of his letters says, that if people persisted in visiting a certain person who was under his displeasure, “their ears and noses should be dispensed with.” This strange tyrant wrote odes in praise of himself, and describes the effect of his just government to be such, that in the security of his protection “the deer of the forest made their pillow of the lion and the tyger, and their mattress of the leopard and the panther.”

Tippoo did not consider ears and noses to be superfluities when in that wanton wickedness which seldom fails to accompany the possession of irresponsible power he spoke of dispensing with them. But in one instance arms and legs were regarded as worse than superfluous. Some years ago a man was exhibited who was born without either, and in that condition had found a woman base enough to marry him. Having got some money together, she one day set this wretched creature upon a chimney-piece, from whence he could not move, and went off with another man, stripping him of every thing that she could carry away. The first words he uttered, when some one came into the room and took him down, were an imprecation upon those people who had legs and arms, because, he said they were always in mischief!

The Mahommedans believe that every man's fate is written on his forehead, but that it can be read by those only whose eyes have been opened. The Brahmins say that the sutures of the skull describe in like manner the owner's destined fortune, but neither can this mysterious writing be seen by any one during his life, nor decyphered after his death. Both these notions are mere fancies which afford a foundation for nothing worse than fable. Something more extraordinary has been excogitated by W. Y. Playtes, Lecturer upon the Signs of the light of the Understanding. He announces to mankind that the prints of the nails of the Cross which our Lord shewed Thomas, are printed in the roots of the nails of the hands and feet of every man that is born into the world, for witnesses, and for leading us to believe in the truth of all the signs, and graven images and pictures that are seen in the Heavenly Looking Glass of Reflection, in the Sun and the Moon and the Stars. This Theosophist has published a short Prospectus of his intended work entitled the Horn Book for the remembrance of the Signs of Salvation, which Horn Book is (should subscriptions be forthcoming) to be published in one hundred and forty-four numbers, forming twelve octavo volumes of six hundred pages each, with fifty plates, maps and tables, and 365,000 marginal references,—being one thousand for every day in the year. Wonder not reader at the extent of this projected work; for, says the author, “the Cow of the Church of Truth giveth abundance of milk, for the Babes of Knowledge.” But for palmistry there was a plausible theory which made it applicable to the purposes of fraud.

Among the odd persons with whom Peter Hopkins had become acquainted in the course of his earlier pursuits, was a sincere student of the occult sciences, who, being a more refined and curious artist, whenever he cast the nativity of any one, took an impression from the palm of the hand, as from an engraved plate, or block. He had thus a fac-simile of what he wanted. According to Sir Thomas Browne, the variety in the lines is so great, that there is almost no strict conformity. Bewick in one of his works has in this manner printed his own thumb. There are French deeds of the 15th century which are signed by the imprint of five fingers dipt in ink, underwritten _Ce est la griffe de monseigneur._[1]

[Footnote 1: The Reader, who is curious in such matters, may turn to Ames and Herbert, (Dibdin, ii. 380.) for the hands in Holt's Lac Puerorum, emprynted at London by Wynkyn de Worde.]

Hopkins himself did not retain any lurking inclination to believe in this art. You could know without it, he said, whether a person were open-handed, or close-fisted, and this was a more useful knowledge than palmistry could give us. But the Doctor sometimes made use of it to amuse children, and gave them at the same time playful admonition, and wholesome encouragement.