CHAPTER IITHE 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 hisReligio 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 unflagginglytoiled 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., writingfrom 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 onthe 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 extendedand pointing towards the right, is clasped by the right hand.” In those and other expressive gestures the left hand is employed to indicate thenon ego: the other than the gesture-maker.
Symbolic Monograph, Moro Inscribed Rock, Rio de Zuñi.To facepage 19.
Symbolic Monograph, Moro Inscribed Rock, Rio de Zuñi.To facepage 19.
Symbolic Monograph, Moro Inscribed Rock, Rio de Zuñi.
To facepage 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 hisVues 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,—ahand 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 hisAstoria: “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 alsoemployed 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 pigmentrecalls themano-coloradodescribed 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 themano-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.”