Aristotle, I confess, in his acute
and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no
mention of chiromancy:<80> yet I believe the Egyptians,
who were nearer addicted to those abstruse and mysti-
cal sciences, had a knowledge therein: to which those
vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after<81> pretend,
and perhaps retained a few corrupted principles, which
sometimes might verify their prognosticks.
It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so
many millions of faces, there should be none alike:
now, contrary, I wonder as much how there should be
any. He that shall consider how many thousand
several words have been carelessly and without study
composed out of twenty-four letters; withal, how many
hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabrick of
one man; shall easily find that this variety is necessary:
and it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to
make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly
limn out a million of faces, and you shall find them all
different; yes, let him have his copy before him, yet,
after all his art, there will remain a sensible distinction:
for the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest
in that kind, whereof we still come short, though we
transcend or go beyond it; because herein it is wide,
and agrees not in all points unto its copy.
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