122 DANIEL WILSON ON 



of Commou Life," or to point to auy uniformity in the relative sensitiveness of the right 

 and left hands. lu so far as either hand may prove to be more sensitive to heat than the 

 other, it is probably due to the constant exertion of the one hand rendering it less sensitive 

 to changes of temperature. Yet even this is doubtful. Two carpenters chanced to be at 

 work in the College building while the above experiments were in progress. They were 

 both right-handed workmen ; yet, contrary to expectation, on being subjected to the test, 

 they both pronounced the right hand to be most sensitive to heat. The statement of Mr. 

 Lewes is so definite that the subject may be deserving of more extended experiment under 

 other conditions. Any widely manifested difference in the sensitiveness of one of the 

 hands, apart from its habitual use in all ordinary manipulation, and especially among 

 uncultiired races, would assuredly seem to indicate some congenital distinction leading 

 to the preferential use of the right hand. But whatever may be the source of this pre- 

 ference, the ditfereuce between the two hands is not so great as to defy the inlluence of 

 education ; as is seen in the case of those who, even late in life, through any injury or 

 loss of the right hand, are compelled to revert to the less dexterous one. It is, there- 

 fore, well worthy of the consideration of parents and teachers whether it would not be 

 wise to encouras'e the habitual use of both hands ; and in the case of manifest left-handed- 

 ness, to content themselves with developing the free use of the right hand without 

 suppressing the inate dexterity of the left. My own experience, as one originally left- 

 handed, is that, in spite of very persistent efforts on the part of teachers to suppress 

 all use of the left hand, I am now thoroughly ambidextrous, though still with the left as 

 the more dexterous hand. I use the pen in the right hand, but the pencil in the left ; so that, 

 were either hand disabled, the other would be at once available for all needful operations. 

 It was the sad misfortune of Oarlyle, when he had reached the advanced age of seventy-five, 

 to lose the use of the right hand. The period of life was all too late to turn with any hope 

 of success to the vinaccustomed and iintrained left hand ; and in his journal more than 

 one entry refers to the irreparable loss. But one curious embodiment of the reflections 

 suo-o-ested by this iirivation is thus recorded in his journal, upwards of a year after 

 experience had fiimiliarized him with all that the loss im'olved : — " Curious to consider 

 the institution of the Eight hand among universal mankind ; probably the very oldest 

 human institution that exists, indispensable to all human co-operation whatsoever. He 

 that has seen three mowers, one of whom is left-handed, trying to work together, and how 

 impossible it is, has witnessed the simplest form of an impossibility, which but for the 

 distinction of a ' right hand,' would have pervaded all human things. Have often thought 

 of all that — never saw it so clearly as this morning while out walking, unslept and dreary 

 enough in the windy sunshine. How old ? Old ! I wonder if there is any people bar- 

 barous enough not to have this distinction of hands ; no human Cosmos possible to be 

 even begun without it. Oldest Hebrews, etc., writing from right to left, are as familiar 

 with the world-old institution as we. Why that particular hand was chosen is a question 

 not to be settled, not worth asking except as a kind of riddle ; probably arose in fighting ; 

 most important to protect your heart and its adjacencies, and to carry the shield on that 



hand.= " 



The idea of the shield-hand, left and passive, is old as Homer, and familiar to us on 



* Froude's Thomas Carlylc, iv. 347. 



