PRIM#VAL DEXTERITY. 143 
ital origin, the evidence derived from uncultured classes and races is 
most reliable. In the conditions of savage life, where combined 
action is rare, there is little to interfere with the independent action 
of each individual in following his own natural bias. But so soon 
as codperation begins to exercise its restraining and constraining 
influences, a very slight bias, due probably to organic structure, will 
suffice to determine the preference for one hand over the other, and 
so to originate the prevalent 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 drew 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, conve- 
nience, or mere prescriptive conventionality, had not yet found their 
place in that unwritten code to which a prompter obedience is ren- 
dered than to the most absolute of royal or imperial decrees. 
