ABSTRACT
The third primary line, which Palmists call the Heart Line, I renamed the line of Intuition, because I found the meaning of “heart” so unsuitable to the significance of the line, as marked in the hands of people who had unusual ones. I found that individuals who had this line strongly marked and in a good position high in the palm had sensitive minds of an intellectual or idealistic nature. They invariably had also the gift of intuition, used either for expression in art or thought, or for the affairs of life. The only “heart” affairs marked on the line by breaks, chains, islands, etc., were those that caused sorrow, great disappointment, or remorse; and these would naturally affect the intuitive capacity. All the sex affairs and influences of other people that affect the life are marked either on the instinctive or imaginative portion of the hand. This third and highest primary line is likely to show rather the powers of intellectual sympathy and insight; and this I have always found to be the case. Possibly heart bears a different significance in these days than when it was first adopted in Palmistry. In Pascal’s oft-quoted “The heart hath its reasons which the reason doth not know,” the word heart is used almost in the sense in which I use the word Intuition, as meaning an intellectual perception rather than an instinctive feeling. The expressions, “warm-hearted,” “heart affairs,” etc., place the word heart in a different category. Reading, in his Introduction to Metaphysics, Bergson’s definition of Intuition as “a kind of intellectual sympathy” decided my adoption of the name Intuition instead of Heart for the third primary line.
