Why did one hand ever come to be different
in use and function from another? The answer is, because man, in spite
of all appearances to the contrary, is really one-sided. Externally,
indeed, his congenital one-sidedness doesn't show: but it shows
internally. We all of us know, in spite of Sganarelle's assertion to the
contrary, that the apex of the heart inclines to the left side, and that
the liver and other internal organs show a generous disregard for strict
and formal symmetry. In this irregular distribution of those human
organs which polite society agrees to ignore, we get the clue to the
irregularity of right and left in the human arm, and finally even the
particular direction of the printed letters now before you.
For primitive man did not belong to polite society. His manners were
strikingly deficient in that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de
Vere. When primitive man felt the tender passion steal over his soul, he
lay in wait in the hush for the Phyllis or Daphne whose charms had
inspired his heart with young desire; and when she passed his
hiding-place, in maiden meditation, fancy free, he felled her with a
club, caught her tight by the hair of her head, and dragged her off in
triumph to his cave or his rock-shelter. (Marriage by capture, the
learned call this simple mode of primeval courtship.) When he found some
Strephon or Damoetas rival him in the affections of the dusky sex, he
and that rival fought the matter out like two bulls in a field; and the
victor and his Phyllis supped that evening off the roasted remains of
the vanquished suitor.
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