THE PSYCHONOMY OF THE HAND. SiS 
Catholics as a people in the fine arts, not because they are 
Protestants, as some are disposed to think, but because of their 
peculiar organization. In Italy, France, Spain, and Ireland, 
Catholicism, with its mysteries, its poetry, and its art, retains its 
hold upon the conical type; while in England, North Germany, 
and Holland, where the spatulous and square forms abound, 
with their restless action and rigorous logic, Protestantism pre- 
vails.”” Mr, Beamish, however, observes that the above must be 
accepted but in a broad and general sense, and open to some modi- 
fication. The thumb, in relation to the other fingers, is deemed to 
be of the first consequence ; if feeble, so also is the character, and 
vice versd. The end phalanx especially should be long and strong. 
Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Condillac, Kant, and other 
profound and original thinkers, were endowed with large thumbs ; 
so also Voltaire, as seen in his statue by Houdon, a cast of which 
is at Sydenham. Space does not permit extended detail. It may . 
be mentioned that the three principal lines in the palm; viz., of 
Life, of the Heart, and of the Head, are respectively those at the 
root of the thumb, tranversely below the three inner fingers, and 
the third line transversely between those two lines. The tracings 
of hands in the work indicate the accordance with their sufficiently- 
known character of the relative development of those lines and the 
other points before mentioned in several individuals of note—the 
late Mr. Brunel (whose biographer Mr. Beamish also has been), 
Lord Brougham, Dr. Whewell, Miss Helen Faucit, and others. In 
the unavoidable absence of these tracings here, it is impossible to 
convey adequately what by enlarged reproductions of them at the 
lecture was illustrated. | 
