PRIMAEVAL DEXTERITY. 143 



ital origin, the evidence derived from uncultured classes and races is 

 most reliable. In the conditions of savage life, where combined 

 action is rare, there is little to interfere with the independent action 

 of each individual in following his own natural bias. But so soon 

 as cooperation begins to exercise its restraining and constraining 

 influences, a very slight bias, due pi'obably to organic structure, will 

 suffice to determine the preference for one hand over the other, and 

 so to originate the prevalent law of dexterity. The results shown by 

 the ancient drawings of Europe's cave-men perfectly accord with 

 this. In that remote dawn every man did that which was right in 

 his own eyes. Some handled their tools and drew with the left 

 hand ; a larger number used the right hand ; but as yet no rule 

 prevailed. In this, as in certain other respects, the arts and habits 

 of that period belong to a chapter in the infancy of the race, when 

 the law of dexterity, as well as other laws begot by habit, conve- 

 nience, or mere prescriptive conventionality, had not yet found their 

 place in that unwritten code to which a prompter obedience is ren- 

 dered than to the most absolute of royal or imperial decrees. 



