PRIMAEVAL DEXTERITY. 129 



of one hand for the execution of many special operations, the choice 

 seems, without any concerted action, to have been that of the right. 

 Not that there are not many left-handed workmen, artificers and 

 artists, often characterized by unusual skill ; but, the farther inves- 

 tigation is carried, the more apparent it becomes that such cases 

 present exceptional deviations from what seems to be the normal 

 usage of humanity. If the source of this characteristic preference is 

 referable to any peculiarity in the structure of the hand, or of related 

 organs, it ought to be easily explicable. Thus far, indeed, notwith- 

 standing much patient research, it remains unexplained. Yet if it 

 be no more than an acquired habit produced by the necessities indis- 

 pensable to combined action, it is scarcely conceivable that no left- 

 handed nation should be found. It is in this aspect that the evi- 

 dence of archaeology has such special value. If, far behind oldest 

 historic periods, in the prehistoric dawn, it can be shown that man 

 appears to have manifested the same preference for the right hand 

 which we know him to have done throughout the historic period, it 

 will no longer be possible to question that it has its oi'igin in some 

 obscure organic source. Carlyle, looking to man in his pi-imitive 

 stage as preeminently a fighting animal, assigns the original distinc- 

 tion of hands, as others have done before him, to the necessarily 

 passive shield-bearing hand, as contrasted with that of the sword. 

 With the origin of combined action in war, a choice would have to 

 be made as to the side on which the shield was to be cai'ried, if men 

 were to fight in phalanx. 



That such a distinction did exist from remote times is proved by 

 some of the oldest Egyptian and Etruscan paintings, by Assyrian 

 sculptures, and some of the most archaic Greek vases. The right 

 side was in} 86pu, the spear side, while the left was in' danida, the 

 shield side. The familiar application of the terms in this sense is 

 seen in Xenophon's "Anabasis," TV. iii. 26, Kal nap-qyyede roTg 

 Xoy_ayoiz z«'J"' kvwiioriaq noi-qaaaQat ixaarov rov kaorou Xoym, nap' a<7ni8a<^ 

 napayayovTai; rijv ivcDpMTiav im <pd?.ayyoi^, " He ordered to draw up his 

 century in squads of twenty-five, and post them in line to the left." 

 And again. Anabasis, lY. iii. 20 : Tol<; Si nap' iauroT nap-^yysdev . 



dvaffrpicpavrai; in), dopu, x.r.X., " He ordered his own division, 

 turning to the right," etc. Egyptian paintings, though older than 

 the earliest Greek vases, are less reliable ; for in the symmetrical 

 arrangements of hieroglyphic paintings the groups of figures are 



