The Conic Hand

THE conic hand, properly speaking, is medium-size, the palm slightly tapering, and the fingers full at the base, and conic, or slightly pointed, at the tip or nail phalange. It is often confounded with the next type, the psychic, which is the long, narrow hand, with extremely long, tapering fingers.

The characteristics of a full soft hand are as follows.

• The main characteristics of the conic hand are impulse and instinct. People with the conic hand are often, in fact, designated 'the children of impulse.' There is a great variety in connection with this type, but it is more usually found as a full, soft hand, with pointed fingers, and rather long nails. Such a formation denotes an artistic, impulsive nature, but one in which love of luxury and indolence predominate. The great fault with people possessing this type is, that though they may be clever and quick in thought and ideas, yet they are so utterly devoid of patience and tire so easily, that they rarely, if ever, carry out their intentions. Such people appear to their greatest advantage in company, or before strangers.

• They are good conversationalists, they grasp the drift of a subject quickly, but they are more or less superficial in knowledge, as also in other things; they have not the power of the student, through want of application; they do not reason, they judge by impulse and instinct. It is that quality which makes them changeable in friendship and affection; one can easily offend them over little things.
  
  
• They are also very much influenced by the people with whom they come in contact, and by their surroundings. They are impressionable in affairs de coeur; they carry their likes and dislikes to extremes; they are usually quick-tempered but temper with them is but a thing of the moment. But when out of temper, they speak their mind plainly, and are too impetuous to study words or expressions.
  
  
• They are always generous and sympathetic, selfish where their own personal comfort is concerned, it is true, but not in money matters; they are easily influenced to give money for charity, but alas! Here they have not the power of discrimination, consequently the money is given to anybody or anything, which may rouse their sympathies at the moment. These hands never get that credit for charity, which falls to the lot of the more practical types. To get credit for charity very often consists in saving what we give to the beggar and giving to the Church, but the conic fingers never think of that. The beggar comes, and if the impulse to give is there - well, they give, and that is all.

• The interesting type has been called, and deservedly so, the artistic, but such relates more to temperament than to the carrying out of the artistic ideas. It would really be more correct to say that the owners of such hands are influenced by the artistic, than that they are artistic. They are more easily influenced by colour, music, eloquence, tears, joy, or sorrow. Men and women possessing this class of hand respond quickly to sympathetic influences; they are emotional, and rise to the greatest heights of rapture, or descend to the lowest depths of despair, over any trifle.

The features of a hard and elastic hand are as listed below: -

• When the conic hand is hard and elastic, it denotes all the good qualities of the first-mentioned, but accentuated by greater energy and firmness of will. The hard conic hand is artistic in nature, and if encouraged for an artistic life the energy and determination will go far toward making success.
  
  
• It will have all the quickness of the first, with all the brilliancy and sparkle in company and before strangers, and it is for that reason that the conic hand has been chosen to represent those who lead a public life, such as actors, actresses, singers, orators, and all those who follow a purely emotional career.
  
  
• But it must not be forgotten that such people depend more upon the inspirational feeling of the moment than thought, reason, or study. They will do things well, but will not know why or how they do them. The singer will carry away her audience by her own individuality more than by study of the song; the actress, from her own emotional nature, will stir the emotions of others; and the orator will move multitudes by the eloquence of his tongue - not by the logic of his words.

• It must, therefore, be remembered that the type of hand but relates to the natural temperament and disposition of the individual; it is the foundation upon which the talent rises or falls. For instance, a woman with square fingers can be as great a singer, and may often be capable of rising to greater things than the woman with the pointed formation; but she will reach that point by different means - by her application, by her study, by her conscientious work, and by the greater power of endurance and patience that she possesses. Study and development are one half the ladder of fame. Genius sits on the rungs to dream, Study works and rises rung by rung; it is the earthworms alone who, dazzled by the heights above them, confound the two, and oft crown "Study" and call it "Genius".

• The artistic type as a type relates to temperament; the variety of fingers indicates only where that temperament is strongest: as, for instance, the artistic hand with square fingers indicates more the student, and, consequently, more exactness in foundation, method, and correctness, such persons will try and try again until they are successful.

• The spatulate fingers on the artistic hand will give, say, to a painter the greater breadth of design and colour, the more daring ideas that will make the man famous for his originality. The philosophic will give the mystical treatment of the idea- the tones and semitones that subdue the already subdued colours. The lights and shades that creep across the canvas, the poem in the petals of the asphodel, the Benedictus in the hands that soothe the dying - all will be detail, but detail leading to the regions of the spirit; all will be calm, but with that calmness that awes one with the sense of the mysterious.