Sir Daniel Wilson

“ The number of the exceptionally dexterous right-handed, with an invincible instinctive preference for the use of that hand, though large in comparison with the no less dexterous left-handed, are nevertheless a minority. Habit, social usage, and education in all its forms, in the school, the drawing-room, the workshop, in all the arts of peace, and in nearly every operation of war, have so persistently fostered the development of the favourite hand that it is scarcely possible to arrive at any reliable statistics in proof of the initial proclivities of the large majority of conformists. ”

“ Nevertheless the human foot, in its perfect natural development, is not a hand. The small size of the toes as compared with the fingers, and the position and movements of the great toe, alike point to diverse functions and a greatly more limited range of action. But the capacity of the system of muscles of the foot—scarcely less elaborate than that of the hand,—is obscured to us by the rigid restraints of the modern shoe. ”

“ In reality, a strongly developed left-handedness is, equally with a strongly developed right-handedness, an indication of exceptional dexterity. Such skill as that of the left-handed slingers of the tribe of Benjamin is in no way exceptional. All truly left-handed, as well as all truly right-handed persons, are more likely to be dexterous than those who are unconscious of any strong impulse to the use of either hand. The bias, whether to the right or the left, is, I feel assured, the result of special organic aptitude. ”

“ When camping out in long vacation holidays in the Canadian wilds, repeated experience has proved to me that the substitution for a few weeks of the soft, yielding deerskin moccasin of the Indian, in place of the rigid shoe, restores even to the unpractised foot of civilised man a freedom of action in the toes, a discriminating sense of touch, and a capacity for grasping rock or tree in walking or climbing, of which he has had no previous conception. The Australian picks up his spear with the naked foot ”

“ As such, it is the active agent of the primary sense of touch, the organ of the will, the instrument which works harmoniously with brain and heart, and by means of which imagination and idealism are translated into fact. Without it man’s intellectual superiority would be to a large extent abortive. In its combination of strength with delicacy, it is an index of character in all its variations in man and woman [Pg 2] from childhood to old age. It is an exponent of the refinement of high civilisation, no less than the organ of all dexterity and force of the skilled inventor and mechanician. ”

“ Curious to consider the institution of the Right hand among universal mankind; probably the very oldest human institution that exists, indispensable to all human co-operation whatsoever. He that has seen three mowers, one of whom is left-handed, trying to work together, and how impossible it is, has witnessed the simplest form of an impossibility, which but for the distinction of a ‘right hand,’ would have pervaded all human things. ”

“ He alone, in the strict sense of the term, is a manufacturer. The Quadrumana, though next to man in the approximation of their fore-limbs to hands, claim no place among the instinctive architects, weavers, or spinners. The human hand, as an instrument of constructive design or artistic skill, ranks wholly apart from all the organs employed in the production of analogous work among the lower animals. The hand of the ape accomplishes nothing akin to the masonry of the swallow, or the damming and building of the beaver. ”

“ Charles Reade, styled “The Coming Man,” specially aiming at the development in the rising generation of the use of the left hand, so that the man of the future shall be ambidextrous or “either-handed,” he remarks: “There certainly is amongst mankind a vast weight of opinion against my position that man is by nature as either-handed as an ape; and that custom should follow nature. The majority believe the left arm and hand inferior to the right in three things: power, dexterity, and dignity. ”

“ But not only do man’s two hands prove greatly more serviceable for all higher purposes of manipulation than the four hands of the ape: a further specialty distinguishing him as he rises in the scale of intellectual superiority is that he seems to widen still more the divergence from the quadrumanous anthropoid by converting one hand into the favoured organ and servant of his will, while the other is relegated to a wholly subordinate place as its mere help and supplement. ”

“ The Greek augur, turning as he did his face to the north, had the left—the sinister, ill-omened, unlucky side,—on the west. Hence the metaphorical significance of ἀριστερός, ominous, boding ill. But the Greeks had also that other mode of expressing the right and left already referred to, derived from their mode of bearing arms. Ancient sculpture, the paintings on tombs and fictile ware, Egyptian, Assyrian, and classic statuary, all illustrate the methods of carrying the shield, and of wielding the sword or spear. Hence the shield-hand became synonymous with the left. ”

“ No theory is worthy of serious consideration which deals with left-handedness as an exceptional deviation from habitual action; as where, in his earlier treatise, Dr. Buchanan expressed the belief that many instances of left-handedness are “merely cases of ambidextrousness, when the habit of using the left side, in whatever way begun, has given to the muscles of that side such a degree of development as enables them to compete with the muscles of the right side, in spite of the mechanical disadvantages under which they labour.” ”

“ In discussing the specialty of right-handedness, either as an expansion or limitation of the use of the hand, it is not necessary to enlarge on the distinctive anatomical relations of the human hand to the fore-limb of other animals; for if the final results here set forth are correct, the preferential and instinctive employment of one limb and extremity is not an exclusive attribute of man. Nevertheless the hand is one of the most characteristic human features. ”

“ In so far as the hand is to be recognised as the organ of touch or feeling, it plays a different part from the other organs of the senses. It is no mere passive recipient of impressions, but selects the objects to be subjected to its discrimination, and communicates the results to the central organ: the seat of intelligence. As a responsive agent of the mind it is the productive artificer. In its independent estimate of form and texture it performs for all of us the function of sight in the darkness ”

“ There is, however, an instinctive tendency with many, if not indeed with the majority, to use one foot in preference to the other, but not necessarily the corresponding one to the dexterous hand, be it right or left. In skating, for example, where military training has not habituated to the use of the left foot in starting, most persons have an instinctive preference for one foot. So also in football, it is not with most players a matter of mere chance which foot will be used in starting the ball. ”

“ On the other hand, it is no less true that, while the experience of every thoroughly left-handed person shows the possibility of training both hands to a capacity for responding to the mind with promptness and skill: at the same time it is apparent that in cases of true left-handedness there is an organic specialisation which no enforced habit can wholly supersede. ”

“ This considerateness of the Quebec golfers was no doubt stimulated by the fact that there is a skilled golfer of the Montreal Club whose feats of dexterity as a left-handed player at times startle them. A Quebec golfer writes to me thus: “There is one left-handed fellow belonging to the Montreal Club who comes down occasionally to challenge us; and I have watched his queer play with a good deal of interest and astonishment.”
To the left-handed man his right hand is the less ready, the less dexterous, and the weaker member. ”

“ The practical distinction between man and any approximate living creature lies in the fact that the most highly developed anthropoid, while in a sense four-handed, has no such delicate instrument of manipulation as that which distinguishes man from all other animals. In most monkeys there is a separate and movable [Pg 4] thumb in all the four limbs. The characteristic whereby their hallux, or great toe, instead of being parallel with the others, and so adapted for standing and walking erect, has the power of action of a thumb, gives the prehensile character of a hand to the hind-limb. ”

“ With the majority no well-defined bias betrays any unwonted power, and they merely follow in this, as in so much else, the practice of the predominant number. But there is no such difference [Pg 204] between the two hands as to justify the extent to which, with the great majority, one is allowed to become a passive and nearly useless member. The left hand ought to be educated from the first no less than the right, instead of leaving its training to be effected, imperfectly and with great effort, in later life, to meet some felt necessity. ”

“ Yet at the same time the experience of a long life assures me that scarcely any amount of training will suffice to invest the naturally sinister hand, whether it be the right or [Pg 206] the left, with the dexterity due to innate, congenital, and therefore ineradicable causes. Nevertheless we are bimanous in the best sense, and are meant to have the free unrestrained use of both hands. In certain arts and professions both hands are necessarily called into play. The skilful surgeon finds an enormous advantage in being able to transfer his instrument from one hand to the other. ”

“ Buchanan states, that during the weakness of infancy and childhood the two hands are used indiscriminately; and the preferential use of one side rather than the other does not manifest itself until the muscular system has acquired active development. All the processes by which dexterity in the manipulation and use of tools is manifested, are acquired, whether the right or the left hand be the one employed. Men are not born, like ants, bees, spiders, martins, and beavers, with carpentering, weaving, modelling, and architectural instincts, requiring no apprenticeship or culture ”

“ Having determinately arrived at the conclusion that the source of right-handedness, and so of the exceptional occurrence of left-handedness, is to be sought for in the preponderant development of one or other hemisphere of the brain, and that, therefore, the test has to be sought in the examination of the brains of persons of exceptional dexterity, whether in the use of their right or left hand, the difficulty has been to obtain the desired objects of study. ”

“ But, like most other right-handed reviewers of the phenomena of left-handedness, he fails to appreciate the bearings of his own argument in the case of a left-handed person conforming in many ways to the usage of the majority, yet instinctively giving the preference to the left hand. He dwells on the fact that very few left-handed persons have learned to write with the left hand, and that those who can do not write nearly so well with it as with the right hand. ”

“ The position of the centre of gravity on the right side is common to all men of normal conformation, and furnishes to all of them alike an adequate motive, when they are about to put forth their full strength in the performance of certain actions, to use the limbs of the right side in preference to those of the left. But such actions are of comparatively rare occurrence, and the theory fails to explain why the right limbs, and more especially the right hand, are preferred on so many occasions where no great muscular effort is required ”

“ It is not sufficient that the knife shall be invariably held in the right hand. The child is taught to hold his knife in the right hand and his fork in the left when cutting his food; but when either the fork or spoon is used alone, it must forthwith be transferred to the right hand. All voluntary employment of the left hand in any independent action is discountenanced as awkwardness or gaucherie; and thus, with a large majority, especially among the more refined and conventional classes of society, it is rendered a comparatively useless member, employed at best merely to supplement the other. ”

“ Yet they naturally follow from it; for so soon as volition comes into conscious play, and the hand obeys the mind, and becomes an organ of the will, the psychical element is felt to dominate over the physical; including that very force of will which aims at eradicating the exceptional left-handedness, and enforcing an undeviating submission to the law of the majority.
It is unquestionably of first interest to the psychologist to inquire not only why the child, at the early stage in which a choice of hands is manifested, should prefer the right hand for all strong movements ”

“ The nurse or mother is constantly transferring the spoon from the left to the right hand, correcting the defective courtesy of the proffered left hand, and in all ways superinducing right-handedness as a habit. But wherever the organic structure is well developed the instinctive preference manifests itself at a very early stage, and in the case either of decided right-handedness or left-handedness, it matures into a determinate law of action, which education may modify but cannot eradicate. ”