THE EDUCATED HAND
The reign of law is a phrase comprehensive enough to embrace many
points of minor import; and among those assigned to its sway the
prevalent habit of right-handedness has been recognised as one of too
familiar experience to seem to stand in need of further explanation.
It has been accepted as the normal usage and law of action common
to the whole race; and so no more in need of any special reason for
its existence than any other function of the hand. Nevertheless it
has not wholly eluded investigation; nor is it surprising that the
exceptional but strongly marked deviations from the normal law should
have attracted the notice of thoughtful observers to the question of
right-handedness as a curious and unsolved problem. A philosophic
speculator of the seventeenth century, the famous old Norwich
physician, Sir Thomas Browne, reverts characteristically to the mystic
fancies of the Talmud for guidance, as he turns to the question in its
simplest aspect, and quaintly ignores the existence of its foundation.
With his strong bent towards Platonic mysticism, this question, like
other and higher speculations with which he dallied, presented itself
in relation to what may well be called “first principles,” as an
undetermined problem. “Whether,” says he in his _Religio Medici_, “Eve
was framed out of the left side of Adam, I dispute not, because I stand
not yet assured which is the right side of a man, or whether there be
any such distinction in nature.” That there is a right side in man is
a postulate not likely to be seriously disputed; but whether there is
such a distinction in nature remains still unsettled two centuries
and a half after the inquiry was thus started. The same question was
forced on the attention of an eminent philosophic speculator of our own
day, under circumstances that involved a practical realisation of its
significance. Towards the close of a long life in which Thomas Carlyle
had unceasingly plied his busy pen, the dexterous right hand, that had
unflaggingly toiled for upwards of threescore years in the service of
his fellow-men, was suddenly paralysed. The period of life was all too
late for him to turn with any hope of success to the unaccustomed and
untrained left hand; and more than one entry in his journal refers to
the irreparable loss. But one curious embodiment of the reflections
suggested by this privation is thus recorded by him upwards of a year
after experience had familiarised him with all that the loss involved:
“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. Have often thought of all that,--never
saw it so clearly as this morning while out walking, unslept and
dreary enough in the windy sunshine. How old? Old! I wonder if there
is any people barbarous enough not to have this distinction of hands;
no human Cosmos possible to be even begun without it. Oldest Hebrews,
etc., writing from right to left, are as familiar with the world-old
institution as we. Why that particular hand was chosen is a question
not to be settled, not worth asking except as a kind of riddle;
probably arose in fighting; most important to protect your heart and
its adjacencies, and to carry the shield on that hand.”
This idea of the left hand being preoccupied with the shield, and so
leaving to the other the active functions of the sword and spear hand,
is familiar to the classical student, and will fitly come under review
at a later stage. Nor can such secondary influences be overlooked.
Whatever may prove to be the primary source of right-handedness, it
cannot be doubted that, when thoroughly developed and systematically
recognised as determining the character of many combined operations,
the tendency would inevitably be to foster the preferential use of
the right hand even in indifferent actions. Two causes have thus to
be recognised as operating in the development of right-handedness,
and begetting certain differences in its manifestation under varying
social influences. There is a progressive scale, from the imperfect
to the more perfectly developed, and then to the perfectly educated
hand: all steps in its adaptation to the higher purposes of the
manipulator. The hand of the rude savage, of the sailor, the miner,
or blacksmith, while well fitted for the work to which it is applied,
is a very different instrument from that of the chaser, engraver, or
cameo-cutter; of the musician, painter, or sculptor. This difference
is unquestionably a result of development, whatever the other may be;
for, as we have in the ascending scale the civilised and educated man,
so also we have the educated hand as one of the most characteristic
features of civilisation. But here attention is at once called to the
distinctive preference of the right hand, whether as the natural use
of this more perfect organ of manipulation, or as an acquired result
of civilisation. The phenomenon to be explained is not merely why each
individual uses one hand rather than another. Experience abundantly
accounts for this. But if it can be shown that all nations, civilised
and savage, appear to have used the same hand, it is vain to look for
the origin of this as an acquired habit. Only by referring it to some
anatomical cause can its general prevalence, among all races and in
every age, be satisfactorily accounted for. Nevertheless this simple
phenomenon, cognisant to the experience of all, and brought under
constant notice in our daily intercourse with others, long baffled the
physiologist in his search for a satisfactory explanation.
The sense of touch--“The Feel-Gate” of Bunyan’s famous Town of
Mansoul,--is not limited, like the other senses, to one special organ,
but pervades the entire body; and in its acute susceptibility to
every irritant contact, communicates instantaneously with the vital
cerebral centre of the whole nervous system by means of the electric
chords or nerves. So effectual is this that “if one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it.” Nevertheless the hand is correctly
recognised as the active organ of feeling; and by the delicately
sensitive and well-trained fingers impressions are promptly conveyed
to the brain and to the mind, relative to the qualities of all bodies
within reach of the unfailing test of touch. In hearing and seeing the
dual organs are in constant co-operation, and the injury of either
involves a loss of power. But though we have two hands sensitive to
all external impressions, only one of them is habitually recognised
as the active agent of the brain; and except in a comparatively small
number of cases, this is the hand on the right side of the body. It
is surprising that this phenomenon so universally recognised as what
may be styled an instinctive attribute of man, should not long since
have been traced to its true source. Yet, as will be seen, some among
the ablest anatomists have been content to refer it to mere habit,
stereotyped by long usage and the exigencies of combined action into a
general practice; while others have referred it to the disposition of
the viscera, and the place of the heart on the left side.
The hand is the universal symbol of amity; at once the organ and the
emblem of friendly co-operation and brotherhood. The mystic grip of
the freemason is older than the builder’s art. In the gesture-language
so largely in use among savage tribes the hands take the place of the
tongue; and the relations of the right and left hand acquire fresh
significance in the modification of signs. Mr. Garrick Mallery gives
the expression of amity among the Otos thus: “The left and right
hands are brought to centre of the chest open, then extended, and the
left hand, with palm up, is grasped crosswise by right hand with palm
down, and held thus.” So in like manner among the Dakotas: “The left
hand held horizontal, palm inward, fingers and thumb extended and
pointing towards the right, is clasped by the right hand.” In those and
other expressive gestures the left hand is employed to indicate the
_non ego_: the other than the gesture-maker.
[Illustration: SYMBOLIC MONOGRAPH, MORO INSCRIBED ROCK, RIO DE ZUÑI.
_To face page 19._]
So also among other rude Indian tribes of North America, no less
than among the civilised and lettered nations in the centres of
native civilisation in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, the hand
is familiarly employed not only as a graven or written symbol, but
is literally impressed, apparently as the equivalent of a signet.
The sign of the expanded right hand touching the left arm occupies
a prominent place among the graven hieroglyphics on an Aztec stone
hatchet shown by Humboldt in his _Vues des Cordillères_. The graven
Moro Rock in the valley of the Rio de Zuñi includes more than one
similar device among its elaborate inscriptions and pictographs; one of
which is specially noticeable. Inscriptions in the Spanish language,
some of them with dates referable to the first intrusion of European
explorers, are intermingled with the native hieroglyphs. In one example
the sacred monograph I.H.S. is enclosed in the same cartouch with
an open hand characterised by a double thumb,--possibly the native
counterpart to the Christian symbol,--a hand of superhuman capacity
and power. Schoolcraft says: “The figure of the human hand is used
by the North American Indians to denote supplication to the Deity or
Great Spirit; and it stands in the system of picture-writing as the
symbol for strength, power, or mastery thus derived.” But the use of
the hand as the chief organ of gesture-language shows how varied are
the applications that it admits of as a significant emblem. Washington
Irving remarks in his _Astoria_: “The Arickaree warriors were painted
in the most savage style. Some had the stamp of a red hand across
their mouths, a sign that they had drunk the life-blood of a foe.”
Catlin found the same symbol in use not only for decoration, but as
the actual sign-manual among the Omahaws and the Mandans. I have
repeatedly observed the red hand impressed on the buffalo robe, and
also occasionally on the naked breast of the Chippewas of Lake Superior.
In the sculptured hieroglyphics of Central America, and in the Mexican
picture-writings, the human and other profiles are introduced in the
large majority of examples looking to the left, as would be the natural
result of the tracings of a right-handed draftsman. But the hand is
also employed symbolically; while, among the civilised Peruvians,
the impress of the naked hand was practised in the same way as by the
Indians of the northern continent. Among an interesting collection of
mummies recovered by Mr. J. H. Blake of Boston from ancient Peruvian
cemeteries on the Bay of Chacota, one is the body of a female wrapped
in parti-coloured garments of fine texture, and marked on the outer
woollen wrappings with the impress of a human hand. The same impress of
the red hand is common on Peruvian mummies.
The hand or the thumb as a signet possesses a specific individuality.
The lines on the surface of the thumb, as also on the finger-tips, form
a definite pattern; and there is some reason for believing that it is
perpetuated, with slight modifications, as an element of heredity.
But apart from this, the individual hand is replete with character
when carefully studied; and the impress of the native hand on dress
and buildings attracted the notice of Stephens in his exploration of
the antiquities of Central America. The skulls and complete mummies
recovered from Peruvian tombs show them to pertain to a small race; and
the impress of the little hand made on the mummies with red pigment
recalls the _mano-colorado_ described by Stephens as a common feature
amid the ruins of Uxmall: the impression of a living hand, but so
small that it was completely hid under that of the traveller or his
companion. It afterwards stared them in the face, as he says, on all
the ruined buildings of the country; and on visiting a nameless ruin
beyond Sabachtsché, in Yucatan, Stephens remarks: “On the walls of
the desolate edifice were prints of the _mano-colorado_, or red hand.
Often as I saw this print, it never failed to interest me. It was the
stamp of the living hand. It always brought me nearer to the builders
of these cities; and at times, amid stillness, desolation, and ruin, it
seemed as if from behind the curtain that concealed them from view was
extended the hand of greeting. The Indians said it was the hand of the
master of the building.”