PAL/EOLITHIO DEXTERITY. 133 



ably spirited drawing of the reindeer grazing, Irom Thayugeu in the Kesserloch — a sketch, 

 marked by incident, both in the action of the animal and its surroundings, suggestive of 

 an actual study from nature,— all appear to be left-hand drawings. 



The number of examples thus far adduced is obviously too small to admit of any 

 general conclusion as to the relative use of the right or left hand being based on their evi- 

 dence ; but so far as it goes, it suggests a much larger percentage of left-handed draftsmen 

 than is to be looked for on the assumption that right-handedness is the normal condition 

 of man. It indicates, moreover, the importance of keeping in view the distinction to 

 which attention has already been directed, between the preferential use of either hand by 

 the cultured and skilled workman, or the artist, and its employment among rude, 

 unskilled labo^^rers engaged in such toil as may be readily accomplished by either hand. 

 That the use of the left hand is transmitted from parent to child ; and so, like other 

 peculiarities, is to some extent hereditary, is undoubted. This has, therefore, to be kept in 

 view in drawing any comprehensive deductions from a few examples confined to two or 

 three localities. It may be that the skilled draftsman of the Vézère, or the gifted artist 

 to whom we own the Kesserloch drawing, belonged to a family, or possibly a tribe, 

 among whom left-handedness prevailed to an unusual extent ; and so might be developed 

 not only hereditarily but by imitation. But on the other hand, even among those palœ- 

 olithic draftsmen, there is a distinct preference for the right hand in the majority of 

 cases ; and this is just what was to be expected. The more the subject is studied it 

 becomes manifest that education, with the stimulus furnished by the necessities arising 

 from all combined action, have much to do with a fvill development of right-handedness. 

 There is considerable CA^dence in favour of the idea that in many children, if not indeed 

 in the majority, there is no special natural bias leading to the preference for either 

 hand. But with a certain number the preferential use of the right hand is natural and 

 instinctive. Others again are conscious of an equally strong impulse to use the left 

 hand. In the ruder conditions of savage life, where combined action is rare, there is 

 little to interfere with the independent action of each, in following his own natural 

 bias. But so soon as cooperation begins to exercise its restraining and constraining 

 influences, a very slight bias, due probably to indiA'idual organic structure, will suffice 

 to determine the preference for one hand over the other, and so to originate the pre- 

 valent law of dexterity. The results shown by the ancient drawings of Europe's cave- 

 men perfectly accord with this. In that remote dawn every man did that which was 

 right in his own eyes. Some handled their tools and drcAV with the left hand ; a larger 

 number used the right hand ; but as yet no rule prevailed. In this, as in certain other 

 respects, the arts and habits of that period belong to a chapter in the infancy of the race, 

 when the law of dexterity, as well as other laws begot by habit, convenience, or mere pre- 

 scriptive conventionality, had not yet found their place in that unwritten code to which 

 a prompter obedience is rendered than to the most absolute of royal or imperial decrees. 



