HAND AND LEFT-HANDEDNESS. 3 
purposes of intelligent volition. It is the necessary concomitant of man’s intellectual 
development, not only enabling him to fashion all needful tools, and to contend success- 
fully with the fiercest and most powerful animals, provided by nature with formidable 
weapons of assault, but also to respond to every mental prompting in the most delicate 
artistic creations. The very arts of the ingenious nest-makers, the instinctive weavers or | 
builders, the spider, the bee, the ant, or the beaver, place them in striking contrast to 
man in relation to his handiwork. He alone, in the strict sense of the term, is a manufac- 
turer. The Quadrumana, though next to man in the approximation of their fore-limbs to 
hands, claim no place among the instinctive architects, weavers, or spinners. The human 
hand, as an instrument of constructive design, or artistic skill, ranks wholly apart from 
all the organs employed in the production of analogous work among the lower animals. 
The hand of the ape accomplishes nothing akin to the masonry of the swallow, or the 
damming and building of the beaver. But, imperfect though it seems, it suffices for all 
requirements of the forest-dweller. In climbing trees, in gathering and shelling nuts or 
pods, opening shell-fish, tearing off the rind of fruit, or pulling up roots, in picking out 
thorns or burs from its own fur, or in the favourite occupation of hunting for each other’s 
parasites, the monkey uses the finger and thumb; and in many other operations, performs 
with the hand what is executed by the quadruped or bird less effectually by means of the 
mouth or bill. At first sight, we might be tempted to assume that the quadrumanous 
mammal had the advantage of us; as there are, certainly, many occasions when an extra 
hand could be turned to useful account. But not only do man’s two hands prove greatly 
more serviceable for all higher purposes of manipulation than the four hands of the ape; 
but as he rises in the scale of intellectual superiority, he seems as it were to widen still 
further this difference in proportionate manipulative appliance, by converting one hand 
into the special organ and servant of his will; while the other is relegated to a subordi- 
nate place, as its mere aider and supplement. 
There is thus a progressive scale, from the imperfect to the more perfectly developed, 
and then to the perfectly educated hand—all steps in its adaptation to the higher purposes 
of the manipulator. The hand of the rude savage, of the sailor, the miner, or blacksmith, 
while well fitted for the work to which it is applied, is a very different instrument from 
that of the chacer, engraver, or cameo-cutter; of the musician, painter or sculptor. This 
difference is unquestionably a result of development, whatever the other may be; for, as 
we have in the ascending scale the civilised and educated man, so also we have the edu- 
cated hand as one of the most characteristic features of civilisation. But here attention 
is at once called to the distinctive preference of the right hand, whether as the natural 
use of this more perfect organ of manipulation, or as an acquired result of civilisation. 
The phenomenon to be explained is not merely why each individual uses one hand rather 
than another. Experience abundantly accounts for this. But if, as seems to be the 
case, all nations, civilised and savage, appear from remotest times to have used the same 
hand, it is vain to look for the origin of this as an acquired habit. Only by referring it 
to some anatomical cause can its general prevalence, among all races, and in every age, 
be satisfactorily accounted for. Nevertheless this simple phenomenon, cognisant to 
the experience of all, and brought under constant notice in our daily intercourse 
with others, seems to bafile the physiologist in his search for any entirely satisfactory 
explanation. 
