Right-handedness

“ His right-handedness, in short, is part cause and part effect of his universal supremacy in animated nature. He is what he is, to a great extent, 'by his own right hand;' and his own right hand, we may shrewdly suspect, would never have differed at all from his left were it not for the manifold arts and trades and activities he practises. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even the cave men show that right-handedness was the rule in their time, and spear-hand, shield-hand, gesture-language, digital-counting, and the tally-stick, the world over, fixed the speech and writing and right-hand brain-centers in the left half-brain—and, of course, those of the left-hand and fingers in the right half-brain. ”

“ Another theory maintains that the development of right-handedness is due to differences in weight of the two lateral halves of the body; this tends to bring more strain on one side than the other, and to give more exercise, and so more development, to that side. ”

“ The very beginning of our modern right-handedness goes back, indeed, to the most primitive savagery. Why did one hand ever come to be different in use and function from another? The answer is, because man, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, is really one-sided. Externally, indeed, his congenital one-sidedness doesn't show: but it shows internally. We all of us know, in spite of Sganarelle's assertion to the contrary, that the apex of the heart inclines to the left side, and that the liver and other internal organs show a generous disregard for strict and formal symmetry. ”

“ This palæographic tablet is a right-handed drawing; and the same may be affirmed of the group of reindeer, and of others of the Madelaine etchings. They are executed in profile, looking to the left, as any right-handed draughtsman naturally does, unless he has some special reason for deviating from the direction which the facility of his pencil suggests.
The question of right-handedness, as a natural or acquired practice peculiar to man, has a special interest when viewed in relation to his innate instincts or attributes in the remote dawn of human intelligence thus anew brought to light. ”

“ What everybody has failed to see is that right-handedness is necessarily bound up with right-footedness, and right-eyedness, because all closely united functions of the body must be correlated and their centers of motion located in contiguity and upon one side of the brain, in order to make effectual and rapid all responses of the organism to circumstance or environment. ”

“ Where left-handedness is strongly developed, it is, on the contrary, not only accompanied with more than average dexterity in the organ thus specialised, but also with a command of the use of the right hand, acquired by education, which gives the individual an advantage over the great majority of right-handed men. ”

“ Upon this view it is easy to hold that right-handedness is a form of expressive differentiation of movement, and that it preceded speech, which is a further and more complex form of differentiation and adaptation.
The neurological basis upon which this hypothesis rests is adequate, and affords a presumption as to the psychological development as well. The facts I have now given, for the first time, go some way to support the view: 1. Right-handedness arose before speech in the child H——. 2. Imitation by the hand of movements seen arise before articulate imitations of sounds heard ”

“ Most people, in fact, are left-brained, that is, all their delicate and specialized movements are handed over to the charge of the left hemisphere. The ordinary right-handedness for such movements is only a consequence of that fact, a consequence which shows outwardly on account of that extensive decussation of the fibres whereby most of those from the left hemisphere pass to the right half of the body only. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only are cases of exceptional facility in the use of both hands of frequent occurrence, but while right-handedness everywhere predominates, left-handedness is nowhere unknown. The skill of the combatant in hitting with both hands is indeed a favourite topic of poetic laudation, though this is characteristic of every well-trained boxer. ”

“ Left-handedness is due to right-brainedness and this is an accident dependent on a diversion of blood supply in an increased amount to this side of the brain in early embryonic life. This question of the criminal and the left-handed individual and their mutual relations is only a good example, then, of how far over zealous advocates of a theory have been led astray in their attempts to bolster it up. ”

“ Out of a hundred human beings fifty-one will be found in the long run on the side of the right, so far as they know it, and against the wrong. They will be organizers rather than disorganizers, helpers and not hinderers in the upward movement of the race. This is the main fact we have to depend on. The right hand of the great organism is a little stronger than the left, that is all.
Now and then we come across a left-handed man. So now and then we find a tribe or a generation, the subject of what we may call moral left-handedness, but that need not trouble us about our formula. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There, it may be, a family, or possibly a tribe, dwelt, among whom left-handedness prevailed to an unusual extent, along with a degree of skill and dexterity, such as is frequently found to accompany the instinctive use of the left hand. ”

“ THE reader has no doubt often wondered why people almost invariably use their right hand in preference to the left. Is it not remarkable that, through all time and in all lands, man has been a right-handed being? ”

“ Undertaken later, the result is often to spoil the skill of the left hand, without training the right to do its work as well. In conclusion, from what we have seen above, in answer to the question, Why are we right-handed? ”

“ Though I think the superiority of the right hand is acquired, and is a result of its more frequent use, the tendency to use it in preference to the left is so universal that it would seem to be natural. ”

“ James Shaw, by whom the subject has been brought under the notice of the British Association and the Anthropological Institute, remarks in a communication to the latter: “Left-handedness is very mysterious. ”

“ If the attention of physiologists devoted to cerebral investigations is specially turned to the present aspect of research, cases of well-marked left-handed patients, or what is manifestly of even [Pg 211] greater significance, of exceptionally dexterous right-handed patients, in hospitals, asylums, and gaols, will from time to time present themselves. It has indeed been affirmed that left-handedness prevails among the “light-fingered” experts who find frequent lodging in our gaols. ”

“ From being carried in the right arm of his nurse, his right hand is set at liberty for action and use, while his left is at rest: the habit of using the right hand in preference to the left is thus acquired and never forgotten. ”

“ By what half-development of human power has the left hand been neglected? When we arrive at the acme of civilization shall we not all be ambidextrous, and in our hand-to-hand contests against difficulties shall we not be doubly triumphant? It occurs to me, by the way, that when my teacher was training my unreclaimed spirit, her struggle against the powers of darkness, with the stout arm of discipline and the light of the manual alphabet, was in two senses a hand-to-hand conflict. ”

“ The left hand is as a rule not on terms of confiding intimacy with the right, whether [30] it is scattering seeds of kindness or getting into mischief. In the mental realm the same trick of camouflage prevails. ”

“ But childhood speedily reaches the stage when the privileged hand asserts its prerogative, and assumes its distinctive responsibility. For good or evil, not only does the right hand take precedence in the [Pg 26] established formulæ of speech, but the left hand is in many languages the symbol or equivalent of impurity, degradation, malice, and of evil doings. ”

“ As a general rule the left hand will show the inherent characteristics of the individual; the right hand shows the same characteristics modified by our surroundings or by the individual's personal efforts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, if one is defective, the other will necessarily be incomplete, and perfection cannot be attained. There is a right hand and a left hand in the human body, functionally equal in service and administration. ”

“ The human hand is not only the symbol of the intelligent artificer, “the hand of the master,” the sign and epitome of the lord and ruler; it is the instrument of the will alike for good and evil deeds. The idea of it as the active participator in every act embodies itself in all vocabularies. The imperial mandate, the lordly manumission, the skilled manufacturer, the handy tool, the unhandy workman, the left-handed stroke, the handless drudge, with other equally familiar terms, all refer to the same ever-ready exponent of the will ”