"The Psychic Hand," says d'Arpen-tigny, "is of all hands the most beautiful, and consequently the most scarce, for rarity is one of the conditions of beauty. It is small and slender, compared with the rest of the body. It has a medium Palm, smooth Fingers (or fingers with the Knots barely perceptible), the nailed Phalanges long, and tapering to a point, a small and elegant Thumb. Whenever the Psychic Hand is large and more distinctly knotted, it possesses force and combination, but loses much of its spontaneity," "Let common sense," writes the master, "be the guide of the Useful Hands, - hands of which order, arrangement, and unity are the sole ambitions; let reason be the solitary beacon of the Necessary Hands, ever carried, as they art, towards liberty and truth. The Psychic Hands bear to those two types the same relation the Conical bears to the Spatulate type; they add to the thinker's works the same elements the artist adds to the artisan's works: beauty and ideality; they gild them with a sun-ray, they raise them upon a pedestal, and open men's hearts to them; the soul, left behind by Philosophical Hands, is their guide; truth in matters of love is their end, and openheartedness that means.

"The Psychic Hand is not, as novelists persistently claim, the exclusive privilege of old families. Always scarce in our countries, it really exists nevertheless, everywhere, even among the lowest classes, where it vegetates ignorant of itself, misunderstood and disdained, on account of its comparative inaptitude for manual labor.

"Conical Hands look for imagination and art everywhere; Square Hands, for rule and arrangement; Knotted Hands, (or human reason. It is Divine reason Psychic Hands took for everywhere. They pay no attention, to form, save in the domain of art, convinced, as they are, that civilization is not the absolute consequence of any particular form of religion; that liberty is not the absolute consequence of a democratic form of government; and that slavery is not the absolute consequence of an autocratic form of rule. In their eyes, religious faith is a fact as real as a rational certitude; so they excuse, even when they do not accept, the peculiarities of all religions.

"Psychic Hands are in an immense majority in Southern Asia, whence comes the essentially religious, contemplative, and poetic spirit of the nations which inhabit it; whence come also their respect for maxims (synthesis), and their disdain for methods (analysis); whence comes the preference they feel for holiness (source of repose) over science (source of activity); whence comes the languishing condition of arts, trades, and agriculture among them, and their theocratic and despotic governments, which are of absolute necessity for nations to whom reason and action are a torment. Thus, among us, are Spatulate and hard Square Hands in majority, whereas in India it is the Pointed and Soft Hands which numerically are in the ascendant.

"All nations - however different (physically and morally) they may be from one another, whatever may be the form of their government, the spirit of their culture or the nature of their ideas upon beauty, worth, truth, and usefulness - agree unanimously in giving Pointed Fingers to pictorial or sculptured representations of angels or good genii, with which each race, according to its education, considers the heavens to be peopled."

The entire human race sees nothing tut beauty and elegance in a Pointed-fingered Hand.

"The Racial Psychic Hand, liberally endowed as they are, have only an imperfect comprehension of the things, pertaining to real life: they look at them from too high a pinnacle to see them well. Spiritualists are endowed with lyricism, mysticism, prophetic ecstasies, a luminous, snythetic understanding of all human knowledge: but the talent of applied sciences, including that of the government of men, is wanting among them, unless, as in India, they only have to deal with people belonging to their own type. Again, it would be a great mistake to suppose that the Psychic Hands arc better protected against the errors incidental to the imperfections of our natures, than the others; the world of ideas is not less perilous and deceitful than that of things real. For, if in their enthusiasm, Spiritualists are always ready to sacrifice themselves, they exact from others the same unlimited devotion to their ideals. With their synthetic method of thought, no isolated sentiment, no idea of detail can either touch their hearts, or alter their convictions, or turn them from their objects; it is in their eyes that the end justifies the means; if occasion should arise they will shed blood unhesitatingly - their own blood, or other people's - their own without regret, that of others without remorse.

The Inquisitors of old Spain were men with thin Hands and Pointed Fingers,"