Herein lies the theory of palmistry. Does not Society imitate God? At
the sight of a soldier we can predict that he will fight; of a lawyer,
that he will talk; of a shoemaker, that he shall make shoes or boots;
of a worker of the soil, that he shall dig the ground and dung it; and
is it a more wonderful thing that such an one with the "seer's" gift
should foretell the events of a man's life from his hand?
To take a striking example. Genius is so visible in a man that a great
artist cannot walk about the streets of Paris but the most ignorant
people are conscious of his passing. He is a sun, as it were, in the
mental world, shedding light that colors everything in its path. And
who does not know an idiot at once by an impression the exact opposite
of the sensation of the presence of genius? Most observers of human
nature in general, and Parisian nature in particular, can guess the
profession or calling of the man in the street.
The mysteries of the witches' Sabbath, so wonderfully painted in the
sixteenth century, are no mysteries for us. The Egyptian ancestors of
that mysterious people of Indian origin, the gypsies of the present
day, simply used to drug their clients with hashish, a practice that
fully accounts for broomstick rides and flights up the chimney, the
real-seeming visions, so to speak, of old crones transformed into
young damsels, the frantic dances, the exquisite music, and all the
fantastic tales of devil-worship.
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