PRIMHVAL DEXTERITY. 129 
of one hand for the execution of many special operations, the choice 
seems, without any concerted action, to have been that of the right. 
Not that there are not many left-handed workmen, artificers and 
artists, often characterized by unusual skill ; but, the farther inves- 
tigation is carried, the more apparent it becomes that such cases 
present exceptional deviations from what seems to be the normal] 
usage of humanity. If the source of this characteristic preference is 
referable to any peculiarity in the structure of the hand, or of related 
organs, 1t ought to be easily explicable. Thus far, indeed, notwith- 
standing much patient research, it remains unexplained. Yet if it 
be no more than an acquired habit produced by the necessities indis- 
pensable to combined action, it is scarcely conceivable that no left- 
handed nation should be found. It is in this aspect that the evi- 
dence of archeology has such special value. If, far behind oldest 
historic periods, in the prehistoric dawn, it can be shown that man 
appears to have manifested the same preference for the right hand 
which we know him to have done throughout the historic period, it 
will no longer be possible to question that it has its origin in some 
obscure organic source. Carlyle, looking to man in his primitive 
stage as preéminently a fighting animal, assigns the original distinc- 
tion of hands, as others have done before him, to the necessarily 
passive shield-bearing hand, as contrasted with that of the sword. 
With the origin of combined action in war, a choice would have to 
be made as to the side on which the shield was to be carried, if men 
were to fight in phalanx. 
That such a distinction did exist from remote times is proved by 
some of the oldest Egyptian and Etruscan paintings, by Assyrian 
sculptures, and some of the most archaic Greek vases. The right 
side was éxt ddpv, the spear side, while the left was éx’ doxida, the 
shield side. The familiar application of the terms in this sense is 
seen in Xenophon’s “ Anabasis,” IV. ili. 26, Kat rapyyyecde .tois 
hoyayots zat’ évwpotiag moincacbat Exactoy tov Eavtod Adyov, nap’ aoniOas 
Tapayayoytas tTHy évwpotiay éxt gdiayyos, “ He ordered to draw up his 
century in squads of twenty-five, and post them in line to the left.” 
And again, Anabasis, IV. iii. 20: Tote 62 zap’ autw napyyyethev 
avactpépavtas éxt ddpv, x.t.2., ‘‘ He ordered his own division, 
turning to the right,” etc. Egyptian paintings, though older than 
the earliest Greek vases, are less reliable; for in the symmetrical 
arrangements of hieroglyphic paintings the groups of figures are 
