cutaneous and articular, it helps to frame a figured consciousness of the size, form, rondure, edges, etc., of things. At the end of the index finger there are twenty-one Meissner corpuscles to one square millimeter. The finger tip can distinguish separate vibrations, even though they impinge at the rate of 1552 per second, can discern a minimal distance of one tenth of a millimeter, and a weight of three grams to a square millimeter. Furthermore, the internal sensory mechanism of the hand is so delicate that if the hand be moved through the tiniest fraction of an arc, the movement will nevertheless be felt. Contrast all these powers with those of the brute paw! But these refined sensory qualities are not to be considered as divorced from the incomparable motor mechanism of the hand. It is the motility of the hand, joined with its intrinsic sensitiveness, that makes it the supreme organ of perception. The rods and cones of the retina are not stereognostic. As MacDougall says, "The world becomes real to us only in so far as we are active in relation to it." Creatures with clumsy and callous limbs cannot get the varied tactual contact with the configuration of objects upon which clear perception depends. The exploring hand furnishes not only the passive tactual experiences, but the vivid, orderly kinæsthetic sensations which make it "a second visual sense by which the pathway of visual perception is illuminated." If teachers were only more profoundly convinced of the psychology of all this, they would not so exclusively address the eye and the ear. It seems to us that teachers should become more conscious of the hands of their pupils. When the whole boy comes to school, he brings his hands with him, and though they may sometimes be dirty, that is not their most vital characteristic. We know one teacher who does appreciate hands. She often takes pupils by the hand; she judges their temperament by the clasp, and when she wishes to understand their passing mood, she feels the hand. By this "digital diagnosis" she learns more than she can in any other way. In fact, she has a half-conscious pedagogical palmistry which enables her to distinguish mischievous, sluggish, and nervous children by their hands. If she hesitates for a pupil's name, she looks at his hands and promptly the name comes back to her, so much individuality has the hand; and when she tries to recall a past schoolroom, an assemblage, not of faces but of hands, troops before her mind's eye. Hands and face, these are the two unclothed, unmasked parts of our physical personality through which character speaks. And Helen Keller writes: "Not only is the hand as easy to recognize as the face, but it reveals its secrets more openly and unconsciously. People control their countenances, but the hand is under no such restraint. It relaxes and becomes listless when the spirit is low and dejected; the muscles tighten when the mind is excited or the heart glad, and permanent qualities stand written on it all the time." These qualities, both permanent and passing, deserve the teacher's attention. It is not a question of linear astrological palmistry, but of a recognition of the larger expressiveness of the hand. Dr. Warner, after examining some thousands of subjects, men, women, and children, found that "the different postures of the hand could be accepted as expressions of certain conditions of the individual, as physical signs or objective observable expressions inherent at the time." Thus there is the normal straight hand which is extended in a poised, balanced manner typical of strength. The nervous hand tends to bend, and the feeble hand to droop. This extension of the hand is a very good test of the child's general control and vitality. The teacher cannot go into the manicure business, nor will she try to make dandies, but the ideal of a clean, wellkept, healthy hand ought at least to be in mind. She should recognize the existence of unhygienic dirt. A physician, in a recent article, has gone so far as to assert that "the chief unintentional crime of our age, if we can call that which is unconscious and unintentional a crime, is dirty hands. Less than a century ago the medical profession had to face this condition in a serious form." Surely the teacher should be interested enough in finger nails to detect the many cases of nail biting which are very numerous with girls at a critical physiological age. This habit often is a symptom of something larger than a little nervousness. But even so the hand is too precious to be disfigured by onychophagy. There is another form of abuse to the hand whose unpleasantness we cannot cover with a scientific name, but the existence of which is likely to annoy teacher and parent. This is the perversity of sucking the thumb. It crops out in most unexpected places, often is a fetish for inducing sleep, and sometimes the very structure and flaccid appearance of the thumb betray its excessive indulgence. The palate may even be so deformed as to cause a lisp in speech. In many cases no amount of persuasion, bribe, or punishment is of avail. Even bitter aloes and asafetida applied to the thumb do not deter, and we know of one case which did not respond to treatment until an old-fashioned country doctor tied the arm to a shingle splint under the garment in such a way that it could not be flexed, and the thumb simply could not be brought to the mouth. Is not the hand worthy of a little more conscious appreciation and respect? We fold the hands of death tenderly, and they affect us with a strange power, for when lifeless they suddenly suggest so much that we never thought of while they were living and acting; for those hands symbolize all the deeds and misdeeds of a life. One of the most impressive objects in the National Museum at Washington is a bronze cast of the strong and tender hand of Abraham Lincoln. How the hands of people differ, reflecting all the fortunes of life, the hands of the toiler made horny by the physical struggle for existence; the supple, self-expressive hands of the artist; the worn, disfigured hands of the machine tender; the tireless hands of the mother who does everything; and the characterless hands "that spin not and toil not, and yet are not beautiful. Beneath their soft, smooth roundness what a chaos of undeveloped character!" Highest of all ranks the hand which embodies fully the qualities both of science and of humanitarianism," merciful gentleness and splendid certainty." The Scriptures have touched the hands with idealism. We are told that we must have both a pure heart and clean hands. If the teacher feels something of this idealism, she will be able to impart it to the child. It is worth while to make a boy really feel the sentiment of honor toward his hands. |