26 EIGHT AND LEFT 



Observe, too, that the very conditions of technique 

 demand this order almost as rigorously in painting as in 

 writing. For the painter will naturally so work as not to 

 smudge over what he has already painted : and he will also 

 naturally begin with the earliest episode in the story he 

 unfolds, proceeding to the others in due succession. From 

 which two principles it necessarily results that he will 

 begin at the upper left, and end at the lower right-hand 

 corner. 



I have skipped lightly, I admit, over a considerable 

 interval between primitive man and Benozzo Gozzoli. 

 But consider further that during all that time the uses of 

 the right and left hand were becoming by gradual degrees 

 each day still further differentiated and specialised. In- 

 numerable trades, occupations, and habits imply ever- 

 widening differences in the way we use them. It is not 

 the right hand alone that has undergone an education in 

 this respect : the left, too, though subordinate, has still its 

 own special functions to perform. If the savage chips his 

 flints with a blow of the right, he holds the core, or main 

 mass of stone from which he strikes it, firmly with his left. 

 If one hand is specially devoted to the knife, the other 

 grasps the fork to make up for it. In almost every act we 

 do with both hands, each has a separate office to which it 

 is best fitted. Take, for example, so simple a matter as 

 buttoning one's coat, where a curious distinction between 

 the habits of the sexes enables us to test the principle with 

 ease and certainty. Men's clothes are always made with 

 the buttons on the right side and the button-holes on the 

 left. Women's, on the contrary, are always made with 

 the buttons on the left side, and the button-holes on the 

 right. (The occult reason for this curious distinction, 

 which has long engaged the attention of philosophers, has 

 never yet been discovered, but it is probably to be accounted 



