PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTION
The venerable philosopher of Chelsea, musing, with sorrowful
experiences to stimulate inquisitiveness, after wondering if any people
are to be found barbarous enough not to have this distinction of
hands, sums up with the evasion: “Why that particular hand was chosen
is a question not to be settled; not worth asking except as a kind of
riddle.” It seems, however, to be regarded by intelligent inquirers as
a riddle that ought to be, and that can be solved, though they have
wandered into very diverse courses in search of a solution.
It has been affirmed, for example, that while the right hand is more
sensitive to touch, and, as it were, the special seat of the sense
of feeling,--as with the right-handed it may well be from constant
employment in all operations involving such a test,--the left hand is
stated to be the more sensitive to any change of temperature.
Mr. George Henry Lewes, in his _Physiology of Common Life_, says: “If
the two hands be dipped in two basins of water at the same temperature,
the left hand will feel the greater sensation of warmth; nay, it will
do this even where the thermometers show that the water in the left
basin is really somewhat colder than in the right basin;” and he adds:
“I suspect that with ‘left-handed’ persons the reverse would be found.”
On the assumption that the former is a well-established law, the latter
seems a legitimate inference; but, as will be seen from what follows,
there is good reason for doubting that the statement rests on an
adequate amount of evidence.
To determine the prevalence of this relative sensitiveness to heat of
the right and left hand, the test ought to be applied to uncultured
and savage, as well as to civilised man. The elements which tend
to complicate the inquiry are very various. The left-handed man is
nearly always ambidextrous, though with an instinctive preference for
the left hand in any operation requiring either special dexterity or
unusual force. Hence his right hand, though less in use than that
of the right-handed man, is in no such condition of habitual inertia
as the other’s left hand. Again, a large number give the preference
to the right hand from a mere compliance with the practice of the
majority; but with no special innate impulse to the use of one hand
rather than the other. But besides those, there is a considerable
minority in whom certain indications suffice to show that the bias,
though no strong and overruling impulse, is in favour of the left
hand. I have, accordingly, had a series of tentative observations made
for me in the Physical Laboratory of the University of Toronto, under
the superintendence of Mr. W. J. Loudon, Demonstrator of Physics.
The undergraduates willingly submitted themselves to the requisite
tests; and the series of experiments were carried out by Mr. Loudon
with the utmost care. No idea was allowed to transpire calculated to
suggest anticipated results. A highly characteristic Canadian test of
any latent tendency to right or left-handedness was employed. In the
use of the axe, so familiar to nearly every Canadian, alike in summer
camping-out and in the preparation of winter fuel, the instinctive
preference for one or other hand is shown in always keeping the surer
hand nearest the axe-blade. This test was the one appealed to in
classifying those who submitted to the following experiments. The trial
was made with water very nearly 30° centigrade. The results arrived
at are shown here, the persons experimented on being divided into
three classes: (1) Right-handed, or those who habitually use the right
hand, and who in handling an axe place the right hand above the left,
nearest the axe-head. (2) Ordinarily using the right hand, but placing
the left hand above the right in the use of the axe. These appear to
be generally ambidextrous. (3) Those who are generally said to be
left-handed, but employ the pen in the right hand, and also use that
hand in many other operations. This class includes very varying degrees
of bias; and though loosely characterised as left-handed, from some
greater or less tendency to use that hand, the majority of them were
found to place the right hand above the left in the use of the axe.
One hundred and sixty-four in all were subjected to the test, with the
following results: Of ninety right-handed persons, thirty-five found
the right hand the more sensitive, thirty-three the left hand, and
twenty-two failed to discern an appreciable difference. Of fifty-six
persons of the second class, right-handed but using the left as the
guiding hand with the axe, seventeen found the right hand the more
sensitive, and fifteen the left, while twenty-four felt no difference.
Of eighteen of the third class, six found the right hand the more
sensitive, seven the left hand, and five could detect no difference.
Another case was that of a lady, decidedly left-handed, who writes,
sews, and apparently does nearly everything with her left hand. She
tried at three temperatures, viz. 5°, 30°, and 48° centigrade. In the
first case she pronounced the left hand to be undoubtedly colder, in
the second she observed no difference, and in the third, the left hand
was undoubtedly warmer. Another lady, also habitually using her needle
in the left hand, and otherwise instinctively reverting to that hand in
all operations requiring delicate or skilful manipulation, repeated the
same experiment more than once at my request; but could not detect any
difference in the sensitiveness of either hand. The results thus stated
were all arrived at with great care. It is manifest that they fail to
confirm the statement set forth in the _Physiology of Common Life_,
or to point to any uniformity in the relative sensitiveness of the
right and left hands. In so far as either hand may prove to be more
sensitive to heat than the other, it is probably due to the constant
exertion of the one hand rendering it less sensitive to changes of
temperature. Yet even this is doubtful. Two carpenters chanced to
be at work in the College building while the above experiments were
in progress. They were both right-handed workmen; yet, contrary to
expectation, on being subjected to the test, they both pronounced the
right hand to be more sensitive to heat. The statement of Mr. Lewes
is so definite that the subject may be deserving of more extended
experiment under other conditions. Any widely manifested difference in
the sensitiveness of one of the hands, apart from its habitual use in
all ordinary manipulation, and especially among uncultured races, would
assuredly seem to indicate some congenital distinction leading to the
preferential use of the right hand. But whatever may be the source of
this preference, the difference between the two hands is not so great
as to defy the influence of education; as is seen in the case of those
who, even late in life, through any injury or loss of the right hand,
have been compelled to resort to the less dexterous one.
Of the occurrence of individual examples of left-handedness the
proofs are ample, seemingly from earliest glimpses of life to the
present time; and it would even appear that, in so far as the small
yet definite amount of evidence of the relative percentage of the
left-handed enables us to judge, it differs little now from what it did
at the dawn of definite history.
Professor Hyrtl of Vienna affirms its prevalence among the civilised
races of Europe in the ratio of only two per cent; and the number of
the old Benjamite left-handed slingers, as distinguished from other
members of the band of twenty-six thousand warriors, did not greatly
exceed this. In the ruder conditions of society, where combined action
is rare, and social habits are less binding, a larger number of
exceptions to the prevailing usage may be looked for; as the tendency
of a high civilisation must be to diminish its manifestation. But
education is powerless to eradicate it where it is strongly manifested
in early life. My attention has been long familiarly directed to
it from being myself naturally left-handed; and the experience of
considerably more than half a century enables me to controvert the
common belief, on which Dr. Humphry founds the deduction that the
superiority of the right hand is not congenital, but acquired,
viz. that “the left hand may be trained to as great expertness and
strength as the right.” On the contrary, my experience accords with
that of others in whom inveterate left-handedness exists, in showing
the education of a lifetime contending with only partial success to
overcome an instinctive natural preference. The result has been, as in
all similar cases, to make me ambidextrous, yet not strictly speaking
ambidexterous.
The importance of this in reference to the question of the source
of right-handedness is obvious. Mr. 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. It seems to set itself quite
against physiological deductions, and the whole tendency of art and
fashion.” Dr. John Evans, when commenting on this, and on another
paper on “Left-handedness” by Dr. Muirhead, expressed his belief that
“the habit of using the left hand in preference to the right, though
possibly to some extent connected with the greater supply of blood
to one side than the other, is more often the result of the manner
in which the individual has been carried in infancy.” This reason
has been frequently suggested; but if there were any force in it, the
results to be looked for would rather be an alternation of hands from
generation to generation. The nurse naturally carries the child on the
left arm, with its right side toward her breast. All objects presented
to it are thus offered to the free left hand; and it is accordingly no
uncommon remark that all children are at first left-handed. If their
training while in the nurse’s arms could determine the habit, such is
its undoubted tendency; but if so, the left-handed nurses of the next
generation would reverse the process.
While, however, right-handedness is no mere acquired habit, but
traceable to specific organic structure, the opinion has been already
expressed that it is only in a limited number of cases that it is
strongly manifested.
The conclusion I am led to, as the result of long observation, is that
the preferential use of the right hand is natural and instinctive with
some persons; that with a smaller number an equally strong impulse
is felt prompting to the use of the left hand; but that with the
great majority right-handedness is largely the result of education.
If children are watched in the nursery, it will be found that the
left hand is offered little less freely than the right. 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.
My colleague, Professor James Mark Baldwin, has followed up my own
researches by instituting a systematic series of experiments on
his infant daughter, extending over nearly the whole of her first
year, with a view to ascertaining definitely the time at which the
child begins to manifest any marked preference for either hand. As
a specialist in the department of psycho-physics, he carried his
inductive research beyond the range embraced in the present treatise;
dealing with the question of feelings of efferent nervous discharge or
innervation, the motor force of memories of effortless movement, and
other conceptions of the psychologist which lie outside of the simpler
issue under consideration here. 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;
but also, whether previous experiences in the use of both hands leave
behind a sense that the nervous discharge which actuated the right hand
was stronger than that which actuated the left. But the point aimed at
here is to ascertain the originating physical initiative of determinate
action, antecedent to all memory; the precursor of any such action
stimulated by memory of an efferent current of discharge of nervous
force. For that end the following results, derived from a careful
series of observations on the voluntary actions of a healthy child
throughout its first year, are of practical significance and value.
“(1) No trace of preference for either hand was found so long as there
were no violent muscular exertions made (based on 2187 systematic
experiments in cases of free movement of hands near the body: _i.e._
right hand 585 cases, left hand 568 cases: a difference of 17 cases;
both hands 1034 cases; the difference of 17 cases being too slight to
have meaning).
“(2) Under the same conditions, the tendency to use both hands together
was about double the tendency to use either (seen from the number
of cases of the use of both hands in the statistics given above),
the period covered being from the child’s sixth to her tenth month
inclusive.
“(3) A distinct preference for the right hand in violent efforts
in reaching became noticeable in the seventh and eighth months.
Experiments during the eighth month on this cue gave, in 80 cases,
right hand 74 cases, left hand 5 cases, both hands 1 case. In many
cases the left hand followed slowly upon the lead of the right. Under
the stimulus of bright colours, from 86 cases, 84 were right-hand
cases, and 2 left-hand. Right-handedness had accordingly developed
under pressure of muscular effort.
“(4) Up to this time the child had not learned to stand or to creep;
hence the development of one hand more than the other is not due to
differences in weight between the two longitudinal halves of the body.
As she had not learned to speak, or to utter articulate sounds with
much distinctness, we may say also that right or left-handedness may
develop while the motor speech centre is not yet functioning.”[9]
[9] _Science_, vol. xvi. pp. 247, 248.
But memory of prior experiences, habit confirmed by persistent usage,
and the influence of example and education, all come into play at an
early stage, and lend confirmation to the natural bias. The potency of
such combined influences must largely affect the results in many cases
where the difference in force between the two cerebral hemispheres is
slight; and the stimulus to preferential action is consequently weak,
as in many cases it undoubtedly is, and therefore not calculated to
present any insurmountable resistance to counteracting or opposing
influences. Under the term education, as a factor developing or
counteracting the weak tendency towards either bias, must be included
many habits superinduced not only by the example of the majority, but
by their constructive appliances. So soon as the child is old enough
to be affected by such influences, the fastening of its clothes, the
handling of knife and spoon, and of other objects in daily use, help
to confirm the habit, until the art of penmanship is mastered, and
with this crowning accomplishment--except in cases of strongly marked
bias in an opposite direction,--the left hand is relegated to its
subordinate place as a supplementary organ, to be called into use when
the privileged member finds occasion for its aid.
But on the other hand, an exaggerated estimate is formed of the
difficulties experienced by a left-handed person in many of the
ordinary actions of life. It is noted by Mr. James Shaw that the
buttons of our dress, and the hooks and eyes of all female attire, are
expressly adapted to the right hand. Again, Sir Charles Bell remarks:
“We think we may conclude that, everything being adapted, in the
conveniences of life, to the right hand, as, for example, the direction
of the worm of the screw, or of the cutting end of the auger, is not
arbitrary, but is related to a natural endowment of the body. He who
is left-handed is most sensible to the advantages of this adaptation,
from the opening of the parlour door, to the opening of a penknife.”
This idea, though widely entertained, is to a large extent founded on
misapprehension. It is undoubtedly true that the habitual use of the
right hand has controlled the form of many implements, and influenced
the arrangements of dress, as well as the social customs of society.
The musket is fitted for an habitually right-handed people. So, in
like manner, the adze, the plane, the gimlet, the screw, and other
mechanical tools, must be adapted to one or the other hand. Scissors,
snuffers, shears, and other implements specially requiring the action
of the thumb and fingers, are all made for the right hand. So also
is it with the scythe of the reaper. Not only the lock of the gun or
rifle, but the bayonet and the cartridge-pouch, are made or fitted on
the assumption of the right hand being used; and even many arrangements
of the fastenings of the dress are adapted to this habitual preference
of the one hand over the other, so that the reversing of button and
button-hole, or hook and eye, is attended with marked inconvenience.
Yet even in this, much of what is due to habit is ascribed to nature.
A Canadian friend, familiar in his own earlier years, at an English
public school and university, with the game of cricket, tells me that
when it was introduced for the first time into Canada within the last
forty years, left-handed batters were common in every field; but the
immigration of English cricketers has since led, for the most part,
to the prevailing usage of the mother country. It was not that the
batters were, as a rule, left-handed, but that the habit of using the
bat on one side or other was, in the majority of cases, so little
influenced by any predisposing bias, that it was readily acquired in
either way. But, giving full weight to all that has been stated here
as to right-handed implements, what are the legitimate conclusions
which it teaches? No doubt an habitually left-handed people would have
reversed all this. But if, with adze, plane, gimlet, and screw, scythe,
reaping-hook, scissors and snuffers, rifle, bayonet, and all else--even
to the handle of the parlour door, and the hooks and buttons of his
dress,--daily enforcing on the left-handed man a preference for the
right hand, he nevertheless persistently adheres to the left hand, the
cause of this must lie deeper than a mere habit induced in the nursery.
It is a misapprehension, however, to suppose that the left-handed man
labours under any conscious disadvantage from the impediments thus
created by the usage of the majority. With rare exceptions, habit so
entirely accustoms him to the requisite action, that he would be no
less put out by the sudden reversal of the door-handle, knife-blade,
or screw, or the transposition of the buttons on his dress, than the
right-handed man. Habit is constantly mistaken for nature. The laws
of the road, for example, so universally recognised in England, have
become to all as it were a second nature; and, as the old rhyme says--
If you go to the left, you are sure to go right;
If you go to the right, you go wrong.
But throughout Canada and the United States the reverse is the law;
and the new immigrant, adhering to the usage of the mother country, is
sorely perplexed by the persistent wrong-headedness, as it seems, of
every one but himself.
Yet the predominant practice does impress itself on some few implements
in a way sufficiently marked to remind the left-handed operator that he
is transgressing normal usage. The candle, “our peculiar and household
planet!” as Charles Lamb designates it, has wellnigh become a thing of
the past; but in the old days of candle-light the snuffers were among
the most unmanageable of domestic implements to a left-handed man. They
are so peculiarly adapted to the right hand that the impediment can
only be overcome by the dexterous shift of inserting the left thumb
and finger below instead of above. As to the right-handed adaptation
of scissors, it is admitted by others, but I am unconscious of any
difficulty that their alteration would remove. To Carlyle, as already
noted, with his early experiences of country life, the idea of right
and left-handed mowers attempting to co-operate presented “the simplest
form of an impossibility, which but for the distinction of a ‘right
hand,’ would have pervaded all human things.” But, although the
mower’s scythe must be used in a direction in which the left hand is
placed at some disadvantage--and a left-handed race of mowers would
undoubtedly reverse the scythe--yet even in this the chief impediment
is to co-operation. The difficulty to himself is surmountable. It
is his fellow-workers who are troubled by his operations. Like the
handling of the oar, or still more the paddle of a canoe, or the use
of the musket or rifle,--so obviously designed for a right-handed
marksman,--the difficulty is soon overcome. It is not uncommon to find
a left-handed soldier placed on the left of his company when firing;
and an opportunity--hereafter referred to,--has happily presented
itself for determining the cerebral characteristics which accompany
this strongly-marked type of left-handedness. As himself incorrigibly
left-handed, the author’s own experience in drilling as a volunteer was
that, after a little practice, he had no difficulty in firing from the
right shoulder; but he never could acquire an equal facility with his
companions in unfixing the bayonet and returning it to its sheath.
But as certain weapons and implements, like the rifle and the scythe,
are specially adapted for the prevailing right hand, and some ancient
implements have been recovered in confirmation of the antiquity of the
bias; so the inveterate left-handed manipulator at times reinstates
himself on an equality with rival workmen who have thus placed him
at a disadvantage. Probably the most ancient example of an implement
expressly adapted for the right hand is the handle of a bronze sickle,
found in 1873 at the lake-dwelling of Möringen, on the Lake of
Brienne, Switzerland. Bronze sickles have long been familiar to the
archæologist, among the relics of the prehistoric era known as the
Bronze Age; and their forms are included among the illustrations of
Dr. Ferdinand Keller’s _Lake Dwellings_. But the one now referred to
is the first example that has been recovered showing the complete
hafted implement. The handle is of yew, and is ingeniously carved so
as to lie obliquely to the blade, and allow of its use close to the
ground. It is a right-handed implement, carefully fashioned so as to
adapt it to the grasp of a very small hand; and is more incapable of
use by a left-handed shearer than a mower’s scythe. Its peculiar form
is shown in an illustration which accompanies Dr. Keller’s account;
and in noting that the handle is designed for a right-handed person,
he adds: “Even in the Stone Age, it has already been noticed that the
implements in use at that time were fitted for the right hand only.”
But if so, the same adaptability was available for the left-handed
workman, wherever no necessity for co-operation required him to conform
to the usage of the majority. Instances of left-handed carpenters who
have provided themselves with benches adapted to their special use
have come under my notice. I am also told of a scythe fitted to the
requirements of a left-handed mower, who must have been content to work
alone; and reference has already been made to sets of golfing drivers
and clubs for the convenience of left-handed golfers.
[Illustration: HANDLE OF BRONZE SICKLE, MÖRINGEN, SWITZERLAND.
_To face page 138._]
The truly left-handed, equally with the larger percentage of those who
may be designated truly right-handed, are exceptionally dexterous; and
to the former the idea that the instinctive impulse which influences
their preference is a mere acquired habit, traceable mainly to some
such bias as the mode of carrying in the nurse’s arms in infancy, is
utterly untenable. The value of personal experience in determining some
of the special points involved in this inquiry is obvious, and will
excuse a reference to my own observations, as confirmed by a comparison
with those of others equally affected, such as Professor Edward S.
Morse, Dr. E. A. Reeve, a former pupil of my own, and my friend, Dr.
John Rae, the Arctic explorer. The last remarked in a letter to me,
confirming the idea of hereditary transmission: “Your case as to
left-handedness seems very like my own. My mother was left-handed,
and very neat-handed also. My father had a crooked little finger on
the left hand. So have =I=.” Referring to personal experience, I may
note as common to myself with other thoroughly left-handed persons,
that, with an instinctive preference for the left hand, which equally
resisted remonstrance, proffered rewards, and coercion, I nevertheless
learned to use the pen in the right hand, apparently with no greater
effort than other boys who pass through the preliminary stages of the
art of penmanship. In this way the right hand was thoroughly educated,
but the preferential instinct remained. The slate-pencil, the chalk,
and penknife were still invariably used in the left hand, in spite
of much opposition on the part of teachers; and in later years, when
a taste for drawing has been cultivated with some degree of success,
the pencil and brush are nearly always used in the left hand. At a
comparatively early age the awkwardness of using the spoon and knife
at table in the left hand was perceived and overcome. Yet even now,
when much fatigued, or on occasion of unusual difficulty in carving a
joint, the knife is instinctively transferred to the left hand. Alike
in every case where unusual force is required, as in driving a large
nail, wielding a heavy tool, or striking a blow with the fist, as
well as in any operation demanding special delicacy, the left hand
is employed. Thus, for example, though the pen is invariably used in
the right hand in penmanship, the crow-quill and etching needle are
no less uniformly employed in the left hand. Hence, accordingly, on
proceeding to apply the test of the hand to the demotic writing of
the Egyptians, by copying rapidly the Turin enchorial papyrus already
referred to, first with the right hand and then with the left, while
some of the characters were more accurately rendered as to slope,
thickening of lines, and curve, with the one hand, and some with the
other, I found it difficult to decide on the whole which hand executed
the transcription with greater ease. In proof of the general facility
thus acquired, I may add that I find no difficulty in drawing at the
same time with a pencil in each hand, profiles of men or animals facing
each other. The attempt to draw different objects, as a dog’s head
with the one hand and a human profile with the other, is unsuccessful,
owing to the complex mental operation involved; and in this case the
co-operation is apt to be between the mind and the more facile hand.
In the simultaneous drawing of reverse profiles there is what, to
an ordinary observer, would appear to be thorough ambidexterity.
Nevertheless, while there is in such cases of ambidexterity,
characteristic of most left-handed persons, little less command of
the right hand than in those exclusively right-handed, it is wholly
acquired; nor, in my own experience, has the habit, fostered by the
practice of upwards of seventy years, overcome the preferential use of
the other hand.
When attending the meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science held at Buffalo in 1867, my attention was
attracted by the facility with which Professor Edward S. Morse used his
left hand when illustrating his communications by crayon drawings on
the blackboard. His ability in thus appealing to the eye is well known.
The Boston _Evening Transcript_, in commenting on a course of lectures
delivered there, thus proceeds: “We must not omit to mention the
wonderful skill displayed by Professor Morse in his blackboard drawings
of illustrations, using either hand with facility, but working chiefly
with the left hand. The rapidity, simplicity, and remarkable finish
of these drawings elicited the heartiest applause of his audience.”
Referring to the narrative of my own experience as a naturally
left-handed person subjected to the usual right-hand training with
pen, pencil, knife, etc., Professor Morse remarks in a letter to me:
“I was particularly struck by the description of your experiences in
the matter, for they so closely accord with my own: my teachers having
in vain endeavoured to break off the use of the left hand, which only
resulted in teaching me to use my right hand also. At a short distance,
I can toss or throw with the right hand quite as accurately as I can
with my left. But when it comes to flinging a stone or other object a
long distance, I always use the left hand as coming the most natural.
There are two things which I cannot possibly do with my right hand,
and that is to drive a nail, or to carve, cut, or whittle. For several
years I followed the occupation of mechanical draughtsman, and I may
say that there was absolutely no preference in the use of either
hand; and in marking labels, or lettering a plan, one hand was just
as correct as the other.” I may add here that in my own case, though
habitually using the pen in my right hand, yet when correcting a proof,
or engaged in other disconnected writing, especially if using a pencil,
I am apt to resort to the left hand without being conscious of the
change. In drawing I rarely use the right hand; and for any specially
delicate piece of work, should find it inadequate to the task.
The same facility is illustrated in the varying caligraphy of a letter
of Professor Morse, in which he furnished me with the best practical
illustration of the ambidextrous skill so frequently acquired by the
left-handed. He thus writes: “You will observe that the first page is
written with the right hand, the upper third of this page with the left
hand, the usual way [but with reversed slope], the middle third of the
page with the left hand, reversed [_i.e._ from right to left], and now
I am again writing with the right hand. As I have habitually used the
right hand in writing, I write more rapidly than with the other.” In
the case of Professor Morse, I may add, the indications of hereditary
transmission of left-handedness nearly correspond with my own. His
maternal uncle, and also a cousin, are left-handed. In my case, the
same habit appeared in a paternal uncle and a niece; and my grandson
manifested at an early age a decided preference for the left hand. Even
in the absence of such habitual use of both hands as Professor Morse
practises, the command of the left hand in the case of a left-handed
person is such that very slight effort is necessary to enable him
to use the pen freely with it. An apt illustration of this has been
communicated to me by the manager of one of the Canadian banks. He had
occasion to complain of the letters of one of his local agents as at
times troublesome to decipher, and instructed him in certain cases to
dictate to a junior clerk who wrote a clear, legible hand. The letters
subsequently sent to the manager, though transmitted to him by the same
agent, presented in signature, as in all else, a totally different
caligraphy. The change of signature led to inquiry; when it turned out
that his correspondent was left-handed, and by merely shifting the pen
to the more dexterous hand, he was able, with a very little practice,
to substitute for the old cramped penmanship an upright, rounded, neat,
and very legible handwriting.
In reference to the question of hereditary transmission, the evidence,
as in the case of Dr. Rae, is undoubted. Dr. R. A. Reeve, in whom also
the original left-handedness has given place to a nearly equal facility
with both hands, informs me that his father was left-handed. Again Dr.
Pye-Smith quotes from the _Lancet_ of October 1870 the case of Mr. R.
A. Lithgow, who writes to say that he himself, his father, and his
grandfather have all been left-handed. This accords with the statement
of M. Ribot in his _Heredity_. “There are,” he says, “families in which
the special use of the left hand is hereditary. Girou mentions a family
in which the father, the children, and most of the grand-children
were left-handed. One of the latter betrayed its left-handedness from
earliest infancy, nor could it be broken off the habit, though the left
hand was bound and swathed.” Such persistent left-handedness is not,
indeed, rare. In an instance communicated to me, both of the parents of
a gentleman in Shropshire were left-handed. His mother, accordingly,
watched his early manifestations of the same tendency, and employed
every available means to counteract it. His left hand was bound up
or tied behind him; and this was persevered in until it was feared
that the left arm had been permanently injured. Yet all proved vain.
The boy resumed the use of the left hand as soon as the restraint was
removed; and though learning like others to use his right hand with
facility in the use of the pen, and in other cases in which custom
enforces compliance with the practice of the majority, he remained
inveterately left-handed. Again a Canadian friend, whose sister-in-law
is left-handed, thus writes to me: “I never heard of any of the rest
of the family who were so; but one of her brothers had much more than
the usual facility in using both hands, and in paddling, chopping,
etc., used to shift about the implement from one hand to the other in
a way which I envied. As to my sister-in-law, she had great advantages
from her left-handedness. She was a very good performer on the piano,
and her bass was magnificent. If there was a part to be taken only with
one hand, she used to take the left as often as the right. But it was
at needlework that I watched her with the greatest interest. If she
was cutting out, she used to shift the scissors from one hand to the
other; and would have employed the left hand more, were it not that all
scissors, as she complained, are made right-handed, and she wished, if
possible, to procure a left-handed pair. So also with the needle, she
used the right hand generally; but in many delicate little operations
her habit was to shift it to the left hand.”
In those and similar cases, the fact is illustrated that the
left-handed person is necessarily ambidextrous. He has the exceptional
“dexterity” resulting from the special organic aptitude of the left
hand, which is only paralleled in those cases of true right-handedness
where a corresponding organic aptitude is innate. Education, enforced
by the usage of the majority, begets for him the training of the other
and less facile hand; while by an unwise neglect the majority of
mankind are content to leave the left hand as an untrained and merely
supplementary organ. From the days of the seven hundred chosen men
of the tribe of Benjamin, the left-handed have been noted for their
skill; and this has been repeatedly manifested by artists. Foremost
among such stands Leonardo da Vinci, skilled as musician, painter, and
mathematician, and accomplished in all the manly sports of his age.
Hans Holbein, Mozzo of Antwerp, Amico Aspertino, and Ludovico Cangiago,
were all left-handed, though the two latter are described as working
equally well with both hands. In all the fine arts the mastery of both
hands is advantageous; and accordingly the left-handed artist, with his
congenital skill and his cultivated dexterity, has the advantage of his
right-handed rival, instead of, as is frequently assumed, starting at a
disadvantage.