180 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



" still more an exception to the large majority in wliom the bias is so 

 *' slight and the dexterity so partial that their practice is little more than 

 " a compliance with the usage of the majority." 



Still more, the fact of the difficulty of overcoming by education, the 

 natural predilection of some individuals to use the left hand instead of 

 the right, so far goes to destroy the theory that education is the reason 

 why men are mostly right-haiidcd, and points out that there is some 

 other reason why there is a natural inclination to use the right hand in 

 preference to the left. 



Sir Daniel Wilson also quotes from Froude's Thos. Carlyle, whose 

 " sad misfortune it was to lose the use of his right hand when he had 

 " reached the advanced age of 75. The period of life was all too late to 

 "turn with any hope of success to the unaccustomed and untrained left 

 ''■ hand, and in his journal more than one entry refers to the irreparable 

 *• loss." But one curious embodiment of the reflections suggested by this 

 privation is thus recorded in his journal upwards of a year after ex- 

 perience had familiarized him with all that the loss involved : " Curi- 

 '' ous to consider the institution of the right hand among universal man- 

 '' kind ; probably the very oldest human institution that exists, indis- 

 " pensable to all human co-operation whatsoever. He that has seen three 

 " mowers, one of whom is left handed, trying to mow together and how 

 '' impossible it is, has witnessed the simplest form of an impossibility, 

 "■ which but for the distinction of a right hand could have pervaded all 

 " human things. Have often thought of all that, never saw 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 fight- 

 "ing; most important to protect your heart and its adjacencies and to 

 " carry the shield on that hand." 



It has been suggested that right-handedness is hereditaiy and so it 

 certainly is, so also is left-handed ness which runs in families^ 



The world is made up of right-handed men the majority, left- 

 handed men the minority, but between the two there are probably many 

 who use either hand indiscriminately. These would soon become right- 



' Judges, 20 Chap., 16 verse. 



