We should have to make things
deliberately different for the two hands--to have rights and lefts in
everything, as we have them now in boots and gloves--or else one hand
must inevitably gain the supremacy. Sword-handles, shears, surgical
instruments, and hundreds of other things have to be made right-handed,
while palettes and a few like subsidiary objects are adapted to the
left; in each case for a perfectly sufficient reason. You can't upset
all this without causing confusion. More than that, the division of
labour thus brought about is certainly a gain to those who possess it:
for if it were not so, the ambidextrous races would have beaten the
dextro-sinistrals in the struggle for existence; whereas we know that
the exact opposite has been the case. Man's special use of the right
hand is one of his points of superiority to the brutes. If ever his
right hand should forget its cunning, his supremacy would indeed begin
to totter. Depend upon it, Nature is wiser than even Charles Reade. What
she finds most useful in the long run must certainly have many good
points to recommend it.
And this last consideration suggests another aspect of right and left
which must not be passed over without one word in this brief survey of
the philosophy of the subject. The superiority of the right caused it
early to be regarded as the fortunate, lucky, and trusty hand; the
inferiority of the left caused it equally to be considered as
ill-omened, unlucky, and, in one expressive word, sinister.
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