[E6] “The artisan stands between every man, woman, and child and the crude materials embodied in the three kingdoms of Nature, and by the magic of his skill they are transformed into means serviceable for use. The wood in the forest, the marble in the quarry, the clay in the bank, the metal in the mine pass through his hands, take on the form of his thought, become arranged by his intelligence, and the product is the modern dwelling. Is there any fancy in fairy tale more wonderful than this? By the skill of the tanner and the shoemaker the raw skin is transformed into the useful shoe. Do you ever think of your indebtedness to these humble toilers for your protection and comfort? Do they ever think of the service they are rendering you?—a service which cannot be compensated by dollars and cents. The jewels which sparkle in royal crowns and add lustre to queenly beauty, the silks and precious stuffs which clothe and give new charms to the loveliness of women, owe their beauty, their lustre, their value to the artisan. He stands between the worm, the mine, and the wearer; and by the transforming power of his skill and patient labor they become robes of beauty and gems of light. But of far greater importance is the service he is rendering to our common humanity. He takes the material which our Heavenly Father has provided in such abundance, puts his thought, his intelligence, and he has every conceivable motive for putting his love and good-will toward men, into them and passing them on as tokens of his love and fidelity to human good. Everything he touches becomes a message not only of his knowledge and his skill but a fit embodiment of his regard for his fellow-men.”—“Mechanical Employments as Means of Human Culture.” Rev. Chauncey Giles. Eleventh Series Tracts, p. 15. Philadelphia: New Church Tract and Publication Society.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MIND AND THE HAND.
The Mind and the Hand are Allies; the Mind speculates, the Hand tests its Speculations in Things. — The Hand explodes the Errors of the Mind — it searches after Truth and finds it in Things. — Mental Errors are subtile; they elude us, but the False in Things stands self-exposed. — The Hand is the Mind’s Moral Rudder. — The Organ of Touch the most Wonderful of the Senses; all the Others are Passive; it alone is Active. — Sir Charles Bell’s Discovery of a “Muscular Sense.” — Dr. Henry Maudsley on the Muscular Sense. — The Hand influences the Brain. — Connected Thought impossible without Language, and Language dependent upon Objects; and all Artificial Objects are the Work of the Hand. — Progress is therefore the Imprint of the Hand upon Matter in Art. — The Hand is nearer the Brain than are the Eye and the Ear. — The Marvellous Works of the Hand.
A purely mental acquirement is a theorem—something to be proved. As to whether the theorem is susceptible of proof is always a question until the doubt is solved by the act of doing. Hence Comenius’s definition of education—“Let those things that have to be done be learned by doing them”—is profoundly philosophical, since nothing can be fully learned without the final act of doing, owing to the fact of the incompleteness of all theoretical knowledge.
The mind and the hand are natural allies. The mind speculates; the hand tests the speculations of the mind by the law of practical application. The hand explodes the errors of the mind, for it inquires, so to speak, by the act of doing, whether or not a given theorem is demonstrable in the form of a problem. The hand is, therefore, not only constantly searching after the truth, but is constantly finding it.[13] It is possible for the mind to indulge in false logic, to make the worse appear the better reason, without instant exposure. But for the hand to work falsely is to produce a misshapen thing—tool or machine—which in its construction gives the lie to its maker. Thus the hand that is false to truth, in the very act publishes the verdict of its own guilt, exposes itself to contempt and derision, convicts itself of unskilfulness or of dishonesty.
[13] “In other cases, even by the strictest attention, it is not possible to give complete or strict truth in words. We could not, by any number of words, describe the color of a ribbon so as to enable a mercer to match it without seeing it. But an ‘accurate’ colorist can convey the required intelligence at once, with a tint on paper.”—“The Laws of Feesole,” Vol. I., p. 7. By John Ruskin, LL.D. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1879.
There is no escaping the logical conclusion of an investigation into the relations existing between the mind and the hand. The hand is scarcely less the guide than the agent of the mind. It steadies the mind. It is the mind’s moral rudder, its balance-wheel. It is the mind’s monitor. It is constantly appealing to the mind, by its acts, to “hew to the line, let the chips fly where they may.”
Dr. George Wilson says, “In many respects the organ of touch, as embodied in the hand, is the most wonderful of the senses. The organs of the other senses are passive; the organ of touch alone is active.... The hand selects what it shall touch, and touches what it pleases. It puts away from it the things which it hates, and beckons towards it the things which it desires.... Moreover, the hand cares not only for its own wants, but when the other organs of the senses are rendered useless takes their duties upon it.... The blind man reads with his hand, the dumb man speaks with it; it plucks the flower for the nostril, and supplies the tongue with objects of taste. Not less amply does it give expression to the wit, the genius, the will, the power of man. Put a sword into it and it will fight, a plough and it will till, a harp and it will play, a pencil and it will paint, a pen and it will speak. What, moreover, is a ship, a railway, a light-house, or a palace—what indeed is a whole city, a whole continent of cities, all the cities of the globe, nay the very globe itself, so far as man has changed it, but the work of that giant hand with which the human race, acting as one mighty man, has executed his will.”[14]
[14] “The Five Gateways of Knowledge,” p. 121. By George Wilson, M.D., F.R.S.E. London: Macmillan & Co., 1881.
There is a philosophical explanation of the versatility of the hand so graphically portrayed in the foregoing passage, and it is found in Sir Charles Bell’s great discovery of a “muscular sense.” The principle of this discovery is that “there are distinct nerves of sensation and of motion or volition—one set bearing messages from the body to the brain, and the other from the brain to the body.”