28 EIGHT AND LEFT 



pavement in walking. A sword is worn at the left hip : a 

 handkerchief is carried in the right pocket, if at the side ; 

 in the left, if in the coat-tails : in either case for the right 

 hand to get at it most easily. A watch-pocket is made in 

 the left breast ; a pocket for railway tickets halfway down 

 the right side. Try to reverse any one of these simple 

 actions, and you will see at once that they are imme- 

 diately implied in the very fact of our original right- 

 handedness. 



And herein, I think, we find the true answer to Charles 

 Keade's mistaken notion of the advantages of ambidexterity. 

 You couldn't make both hands do everything alike without 

 a considerable loss of time, effort, efficiency, and convenience. 

 Each hand learns to do its own work and to do it well ; if 

 you made it do the other hand's into the bargain, it would 

 have a great deal more to learn, and we should find it 

 difficult even then to prevent specialisation. We should 

 have to make things deliberately different for the two hands 

 to have rights and lefts in everything, as we have them 

 now in boots and gloves or else one hand must inevitably 

 gain the supremacy. Sword-handles, shears, surgical instru- 

 ments, and hundreds of other things have to be made right- 

 handed, while palettes and a few like subsidiary objects are 

 adapted to the left ; in each case for a perfectly sufficient 

 reason. You can't upset all this without causing confusion. 

 More than that, the division of labour thus brought about is 

 certainly a gain to those who possess it : for if it were not 

 so, the ambidextrous races would have beaten the dextro- 

 smistrals in the struggle for existence ; whereas we know 

 that the exact opposite has been the case. Man's special 

 use of the right hand is one of his points of superiority to 

 the brutes. If ever his right hand should forget its cun- 

 ning, his supremacy would indeed begin to totter. Depend 

 upon it, Nature is wiser than even Charles Eeade. What 



