EIGHT AND LEFT 19 



remarks in immortal verse, ' was the manner of Primitive 

 Man.' He never minded twopence which hand he used, 

 as long as he got the fruit or the scalp he wanted. How 

 could he when twopence wasn't yet invented ? His mamma 

 never said to him in early youth, ' Why- why,' or ' Tom- 

 tom,' as the case might be, ' that's the wrong hand to hold 

 your flint-scraper in.' He grew up to man's estate in 

 happy ignorance of such minute and invidious distinctions 

 between his anterior extremities. Enough for him that his 

 hands could grasp the forest boughs or chip the stone into 

 shapely arrows ; and lie never even thought in his innocent 

 soul which particular hand he did it with. 



How can I make this confident assertion, you ask, about 

 a gentleman whom I never personally saw, and whose 

 habits the intervention of five hundred centuries has pre- 

 cluded me from studying at close quarters ? At first sight, 

 you would suppose the evidence on such a point must be 

 purely negative. The reconstructive historian must surely 

 be inventing d priori facts, evolved, more Germanico, from 

 his inner consciousness. Not so. See how clever modern 

 archaeology has become ! I base my assertion upon solid 

 evidence. I know that Primitive Man was ambidextrous, 

 because he wrote and painted just as often with his left as 

 with his right, and just as successfully. 



This seems once more a hazardous statement to make 

 about a remote ancestor, in the age before the great glacial 

 epoch had furrowed the mountains of Northern Europe ; 

 but, nevertheless, it is strictly true and strictly demon- 

 strable. Just try, as you read, to draw with the forefinger 

 and thumb of your right hand an imaginary human profile 

 on the page on which these words are printed. Do you 

 observe that (unless you are an artist, and therefore 

 sophisticated) you naturally and instinctively draw it with 

 the face turned towards your left shoulder ? Try now to 



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