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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. CHIEOMANCT. We now proceed to lay before our readers some of the results of M. Desbarrolles' investigations, relating to the phenomena presented by the Lines of the Palm. From the earliest times, the practised chironomist is supposed to have been able to detect the leading peculiarities of character in the lineaments of the palm. Indeed, his knowledge of what the passions are capable of suggesting, has enabled him to prognosticate as possible, certain results, which, when they have actually arisen, have been accepted as proofs of prophetic wisdom by the imaginative and the credulous. As, from our knowledge of man's physiological constitution, we are enabled to predicate that certain definite arrangements of the organs of nutrition, and of the bones and muscles, will necessarily produce the results for which they were designed; so it has been in a similar manner inferred that a certain arrangement of the cerebral organs?a certain structural pre-determination, ?will also produce mental manifestations that shall be altogether independent of the will. These are recognised in the extreme cases of idiocy and madness. It may, however, be stated generally, that man is born into the world with inherent qualities which are placed under the dominion of the will, and which are capable of leading to happiness or misery, according as that will is exercised. If this be so, it would appear to be one of the first and most imperative of man's duties, to make himself acquainted with those definite, inexorable, physical and moral laws, which an all-wise Creator has supplied for his guidance, that he may secure himself against the penalty attached to disobedience or neglect?for Nature makes no distinction between wilfulness and ignorance. Now chiromancy, like physiology, p...