22 EIGHT AND LEFT 



were the custom of the time, and there's no good denying 

 them. 



Now, Primitive Man, being thus by nature a fighting 

 animal, fought for the most part at first with his great 

 canine teeth, his nails, and his fists ; till in process of time 

 he added to these early and natural weapons the further 

 persuasions of a club or shillelagh. He also fought, as 

 Darwin has very conclusively shown, in the main for the 

 possession of the ladies of his kind, against other members 

 of his own sex and species. And if you fight, you soon 

 learn to protect the most exposed and vulnerable portion of 

 your body ; or, if you don't, natural selection manages it 

 for you, by killing you off as an immediate consequence. 

 To the boxer, wrestler, or hand-to-hand combatant, that 

 most vulnerable portion is undoubtedly the heart. A hard 

 blow, well delivered on the left breast, will easily kill, or at 

 any rate stun, even a very strong man. Hence, from a 

 very early period, men have used the right hand to fight 

 with, and have employed the left arm chiefly to cover the 

 heart and to parry a blow aimed at that specially vulnerable 

 region. And when weapons of offence and defence super- 

 sede mere fists and teeth, it is the right hand that grasps 

 the spear or sword, while the left holds over the heart for 

 defence the shield or buclder. 



From this simple origin, then, the whole vast difference 

 of right and left in civilised life takes its beginning. At 

 first, no doubt, the superiority of the right hand was only 

 felt in the matter of fighting. But that alone gave it a 

 distmct pull, and paved the way, at last, for its supremacy 

 elsewhere. For when weapons came into use, the habitual 

 employment of the right hand to grasp the spear, sword, or 

 knife made the nerves and muscles of the right side far 

 more obedient to the control of the will than those of the 

 left. The dexterity thus acquired by the right— see how 



