The Spatulate Hand

The Spatulate or active nervous type (Plate I., Part II.) is usually crooked or irregular looking, with large tips or pads at the ends of the fingers, rather like the spatula chemists use and from which peculiarity this type gets its name. The people who possess this type are in fact always "pounding" at something. They are full of untiring energy, enormous workers in everything they take up, and generally remarkable for their originality.

1 See Chapter on Thumbs, page 127.

They are not built on the hard set square lines of the former type. These persons have enormous imagination, their creative faculties largely developed. They are inventive, unconventional, emotional, demonstrative, and in fact the complete opposite in character to the class who possesses the square type of hand.

The Spatulate type has also the palm irregular in shape. It may be wider at the base of the fingers than at the wrist, or it may be found vice versa.

In the first case they are then more practical in their work and views and less impulsive. With the larger development at the wrist, they are more carried away with their impulses, hasty and impetuous in temper, speech, and action.

Fig. 3. The Spatulate Hand

The Philosophic Hand

The Philosophic Hand (Plate 1, Part II.) received this name from the Greek - love, and wisdom. When the Greeks made a study of hands they noticed that all those persons who possessed this type had a bent for philosophy in their blood that nothing could eradicate.

Fig. 4. The Philosophic Hand.

The Philosophic Hand is long, bony, and angular with knotty joints, and is as a general rule fairly thin. People with this type of hand are always studious. They are great readers and usually have a strong tendency towards literature. They love sedentary work, and have a somewhat lonely, ascetic disposition. Perhaps on account of this quality they are very often found in church-life, or largely associated with religious movements. The monks of old. I mean those who compiled those wonderful manuscripts on doctrine, science, art, alchemy, and occult matters, all had this class of hand. In our modern times this type may be easily recognised, and the qualities it expresses remain the same even in the age of money-getting and machinery.

It is, however, more usual nowadays to find a slight modification of the true philosophic hand in that of the hand with the palm square and with the fingers only belonging to the philosophic type. In such cases the practical nature is a basils or foundation on which the studious mind builds its theories, its religion, its literary achievements, or its scientific researches.

As a rule the Line of Head on such hands is rather sloping, but it may also be found almost straight, and when it is a more "level-headed" disposition will make more practical use of the studious nature. But speaking generally, people with this type of hand rarely accumulate as much wealth as those possessing the Square Hand.

The knotted or jointed fingers give carefulness and detail in work or study. They arrest the impulse of the brain, and so acquire time for thought and reflection.

The Philosophic Hand is one of the highest developments of the mental side of the human family.