Astrology, Phrenology, Physiognomy, and Palmistry have in common
a search for positive knowledge whereby to regulate the affairs
of life, to foretell the future, to comprehend one's destiny
and capabilities. They aim to secure success, or at least to be
forearmed against failure by being forewarned. This is a natural,
a practical, and in no essential way an occult desire. It becomes
occult, or, more accurately, superstitious, when it is satisfied by
appeals to relations and influences which do not exist, and by false
interpretation of what may be admitted as measurably and vaguely
true and about equally important. When not engaged in their usual
occupation of building most startling superstructures on the most
insecure foundations, practical occultists are like Dr. Holmes's
katydid, "saying an undisputed thing in such a solemn way." They
will not hearken to the experience of the ages that success cannot
be secured nor character read by discovering their unreal or mystic
stigmata; they will not learn from physiology and psychology that
the mental capabilities, the moral and emotional endowment of an
individual are not stamped on his body in such a way that they may
be revealed by half an hour's use of the calipers and tape-measure;
they will not listen when science and common sense unite in teaching
that the knowledge of mental powers is not such as may be applied
by rule of thumb to individual cases, but that, like much other
valuable knowledge, it proceeds by the exercise of sound judgment,
and must as a rule rest content with suggestive generalizations and
imperfectly established correlations. An educated man with wholesome
interests and a vigorous logical sense can consider a possible
science of character and the means of aiding its advance without
danger and with some profit. But this meat is sheer poison to those
who are usually attracted to this type of speculations, while it
offers to the unscrupulous charlatan a most convenient net to spread
for the unwary. In so far as these occult mariners, the astrologists
and phrenologists _et id genus omne_, are sincere, and in so far
represent superstition rather than commercial fraud, they simply
ignore, through obstinacy or ignorance, the lighthouses and charts
and the other aids to modern navigation, and persist in steering
their craft by an occult compass. In some cases they are professedly
setting out, not for any harbor marked on terrestrial maps, but
their expedition is for the golden fleece or for the apples of the
Hesperides; and with loud-voiced advertisements of their skill as
pilots, they proceed to form stock companies for the promotion of
their several enterprises and to dispose of the shares to credulous
speculators.
It would be a profitless task to review the alleged data of
Astrology or Phrenology or Palmistry, except for the illustrations
which they readily yield of the nature of the conceptions and of
the logic which command a certain popular interest and acceptance.
The interest in these notions is, as Mr. Lang argues about ghosts
and rappings and bogles, in how they come to be believed, rather
than in how much or how little they chance to be true. It must be
remembered also that our present interest is in the occult factors
of these composite systems; they each contain other factors,--in
part incorporations of vague and distorted scientific truths, in
part dogmatic overstatement of results of observation, which, if
reduced to the proportions warranted by definite evidence, dissolve
into insignificance or intangibility, in part plausible or specious
argumentation, and in still greater part mere fanciful assertion. And
if we proceed to examine the professed evidence for the facts and
laws and principles (_sit venia verbis_) that pervade Astrology or
Phrenology or Palmistry or dream-interpretation, or beliefs of that
ilk, we find the flimsiest kind of texture, that will hardly bear
examination, and holds together only so long as it is kept secluded
from the light of day. Far-fetched analogy, baseless assertion, the
uncritical assimilation of popular superstitions, a great deal of
prophecy after the event (it is wonderful how clearly the astrologer
finds the indications of Napoleon's career in his horoscope, or the
phrenologist reads them in the Napoleonic cranial protuberances),
much fanciful elaboration of detail, ringing the variations on a
sufficiently complex and non-demonstrable proposition, cultivating
a convenient vagueness of expression, together with an apologetic
skill in providing for and explaining exceptions, the courage
to ignore failure and the shrewdness to profit by coincidences
and half-assimilated smatterings of science, and with it all an
insensibility to the moral and intellectual demands of the logical
decalogue,--and you have the skeleton, which, clothed with one
flesh, becomes Astrology, and with another Phrenology, and with
another Palmistry or Solar Biology or Descriptive Mentality or what
not. Such pseudo-sciences thrive upon that widespread and intense
craving for practical guidance of our individual affairs, which is
not satisfied with judicious applications of general principles, with
due consideration of the probabilities and uncertainties of human
life, but demands an impossible and precise revelation. Not all that
passes for, and in a way is knowledge, is or is likely soon to become
scientific; and when a peasant parades in an academic gown the result
is likely to be a caricature.