A.V. Laider | Page 6

The flash in this instance was "Reason is faith, faith
reason--that is all we know on earth and all we need to know." The
writer then inclosed his card and was, etc., "A Melbourne Man." I said
to Laider how very restful it was, after influenza, to read anything that
meant nothing whatsoever. Laider was inclined to take the letter more
seriously than I, and to be mildly metaphysical. I said that for me faith
and reason were two separate things, and as I am no good at
metaphysics, however mild, I offered a definite example, to coax the
talk on to ground where I should be safer.
"Palmistry, for example," I said. "Deep down in my heart I believe in
palmistry."
Laider turned in his chair.
"You believe in palmistry?"
I hesitated.
"Yes, somehow I do. Why? I haven't the slightest notion. I can give
myself all sorts of reasons for laughing it to scorn. My common sense
utterly rejects it. Of course the shape of the hand means something, is
more or less an index of character. But the idea that my past and future
are neatly mapped out on my palms--" I shrugged my shoulders.
"You don't like that idea?" asked Laider in his gentle, rather academic
voice.
"I only say it's a grotesque idea."
"Yet you do believe in it?"

"I've a grotesque belief in it, yes."
"Are you sure your reason for calling this idea 'grotesque' isn't merely
that you dislike it?"
"Well," I said, with the thrilling hope that he was a companion in
absurdity, "doesn't it seem grotesque to you?"
"It seems strange."
"You believe in it?"
"Oh, absolutely."
"Hurrah!"
He smiled at my pleasure, and I, at the risk of reentanglement in
metaphysics, claimed him as standing shoulder to shoulder with me
against "A Melbourne Man." This claim he gently disputed.
"You may think me very prosaic," he said, "but I can't believe without
evidence."
"Well, I'm equally prosaic and equally at a disadvantage: I can't take
my own belief as evidence, and I've no other evidence to go on."
He asked me if I had ever made a study of palmistry. I said I had read
one of Desbarolles's books years ago, and one of Heron-Allen's. But, he
asked, had I tried to test them by the lines on my own hands or on the
hands of my friends? I confessed that my actual practice in palmistry
had been of a merely passive kind--the prompt extension of my palm to
any one who would be so good as to "read" it and truckle for a few
minutes to my egoism. (I hoped Laider might do this.)
"Then I almost wonder," he said, with his sad smile, "that you haven't
lost your belief, after all the nonsense you must have heard. There are
so many young girls who go in for palmistry. I am sure all the five
foolish virgins were 'awfully keen on it' and used to say, 'You can be
led, but not driven,' and, 'You are likely to have a serious illness

between the ages of forty and forty-five,' and, 'You are by nature rather
lazy, but can be very energetic by fits and starts.' And most of the
professionals, I'm told, are as silly as the young girls."
For the honor of the profession, I named three practitioners whom I had
found really good at reading character. He asked whether any of them
had been right about past events. I confessed that, as a matter of fact, all
three of them had been right in the main. This seemed to amuse him.
He asked whether any of them had predicted anything which had since
come true. I confessed that all three had predicted that I should do
several things which I had since done rather unexpectedly. He asked if I
didn't accept this as, at any rate, a scrap of evidence. I said I could only
regard it as a fluke--a rather remarkable fluke.
The superiority of his sad smile was beginning to get on my nerves. I
wanted him to see that he was as absurd as I.
"Suppose," I said--"suppose, for the sake of argument, that you and I
are nothing but helpless automata created to do just this and that, and to
have just that and this done to us. Suppose, in fact, we HAVEN'T any
free will whatsoever. Is it likely or conceivable that the Power which
fashioned us would take the trouble to jot down in cipher on our hands
just what was in store for us?"
Laider did not answer this question; he did but annoyingly ask me
another.
"You believe in free will?"
"Yes, of course. I'll be hanged if I'm an automaton."
"And you believe in free will just as in palmistry--without