652 Dexterity and the Bend Sinister. [May 3, 



If human beings were synthesised in the laboratory of the chemist, 

 we should have an equal number of persons with the heart on the right 

 and on the left side ; but as they are put together in the laboratory 

 of nature, the left side has it by a gigantic majority. 



After all asymmetry is all-embracing ; it is a property of the 

 globe we inhabit. Our world rotates on its axis, in one direction 

 from west to east, and shows no ambi-rotary predilection ; but that 

 imphes the possibility of another, not necessarily a better world 

 rotating in the opposite direction. 



I have skimmed the subject of right-handedness. There are a 

 hundred aspects of it on which it has been impossible to touch. I 

 have endeavoured to show that the propaganda of ambidexterity is 

 not according to physiological knowledge, and that either-handedness 

 is not the charter of the coming man. 



We have been right-handed for a very long while, the foundation 

 of that human characteristic having been laid down long before the 

 first syllable of recorded time. 



We have found our right-handedness very useful, civilisation has 

 largely depended on it, and the world is full of the treasures it has 

 piled up. 



There is not a tittle of evidence that our right-handedness is 

 growing upon us and that we are becoming more and more lop-sided. 

 We are apparently just as right-handed as were the Greeks in their 

 palmy days, neither more nor less ; and, indeed, right-handedness 

 seems to be a terminal form in evolution. 



We cannot, I believe, get rid of our right-handedness, try how we 

 may. To " raze out the written troubles of the brain " is no easy 

 matter ; to delete its deeply engraven records is a task impossible. 

 Ambidextral culture, useful enough in respect of some few special 

 movements in some few specially employed persons, must on the large 

 scale tend to confusion. Pushed towards that consummation which 

 its ardent apostles tell us is so devoutly to be wished for, when the 

 two bauds will be able to write on two different subjects at the same 

 time, it must involve the enormous enlargement of our already over- 

 grown lunatic asylums. Right-handedness is woven in the brain ; to 

 change the pattern you must unravel its tissues. My own conviction 

 is that, as regards right-handedness, our best policy is to let well 

 alone and to stick to dexterity and the bend sinister. 



[J. C.-B.] 



