The right hand

NATURE SERIES
THE RIGHT HAND: LEFT-HANDEDNESS
BY SIR DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.R.S.E. PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AUTHOR OF ‘THE PREHISTORIC ANNALS OF SCOTLAND’ ‘PREHISTORIC MAN: RESEARCHES INTO THE ORIGIN OF CIVILISATION,’ ETC.
London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1891
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TO HIS GRANDSON OSWALD GEORGE WILSON BELL THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR
The following treatise includes data originally accumulated in a series of papers communicated to the Canadian Institute and the Royal Society of Canada, aiming at determining the cause of Left-handedness by a review of its history in its archæological, philological, and physiological aspects. In revising the materials thus accumulated in illustration of the subject, with a view to their publication in a connected form, the results of later investigation have been embodied here, not only with the aim of tracing Left-handedness to its true source, and thereby proving the folly of persistently striving to suppress an innate faculty of exceptional aptitude, but also to enforce the advantages to be derived by all from a systematic cultivation of dexterity in both hands.
Bencosie, Toronto, 24th April 1891 .
The hand is one of the most distinctive characteristics of man. Without its special organisation he would be for all practical purposes inferior to many other animals. It is the executive portion of the upper limb whereby the limits of his capacity as “the tool-user” are determined. 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 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. In the art of the true painter, as in works of Titian and Vandyke, the portraiture of the hand is no less replete with individuality than the face.