recalls the mano-colorado described 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 the mano-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."

CHAPTER III

THE WILLING HAND

THE human hand is not only the symbol of the intelligent artificer, "the hand of the master," the sign and epitome of the lord and ruler; it is the instrument of the will alike for good and evil deeds. The idea of it as the active participator in every act embodies itself in all vocabularies. The imperial mandate, the lordly manumission, the skilled manufacturer, the handy tool, the unhandy workman, the left-handed stroke, the handless drudge, with other equally familiar terms, all refer to the same everready exponent of the will; so that we scarcely recognise the term as metaphorical when we speak of the "willing hand." The Divine appeal to the wrathful prophet of Nineveh is based on the claim for mercy on behalf of those who had not yet

attained to the first stage of dexterity which pertains

to childhood.

Should not I spare Nineveh, that

great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?" To this same test of discernment poor Cassio appeals when, betrayed by the malignant craft of Iago, he would fain persuade himself he is not enslaved by the intoxicating draught: "Do not think, gentlemen, I am drunk. This is my right hand, and this is my left!" Only the infant or the drunkard, it is thus assumed, can fail to mark the distinction; and to select the true hand for all honourable service. It is the sceptred hand; the hand to be offered in pledge of amity; the one true wedding hand; the hand of benediction, ordination, consecration; the organ through which human will acts, whether by choice or by organic law. The attempt, therefore, to claim any independent rights or honourable status for the sinister hand seems an act of disloyalty, if not of sacrilege.

But hand and will have co-operated from the beginning in good and in evil; even as in that first erring deed, when Eve

Her rash hand, in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she ate ;

Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe.

The symbolic and responsible hand accordingly figures everywhere. The drama of history and of fiction are alike full of it. Pilate vainly washes his hands as he asserts his innocence of the blood of the Just One. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!" is the agonised cry of Lady Macbeth. "This unworthy hand!" exclaims the martyr, Cranmer, as he makes it expiate the unfaithful act of signature, as though it were an independent actor, alone responsible for the deed. In touching tenderness the venerable poet Longfellow thus symbolised the entrance on life's experiences—

Oh, little hands that, weak or strong,
Have still to rule or serve so long;

Have still so much to give or ask ;
I, who so long with tongue and pen
Have toiled among my fellow-men,

Am weary thinking of your task.

But childhood speedily reaches the stage when the privileged hand asserts its prerogative, and assumes its distinctive responsibility. For good or evil, not only does the right hand take precedence in the

established formula of speech, but the left hand is in many languages the symbol or equivalent of impurity, degradation, malice, and of evil doings.

Looking then on right-handedness as a very noticeable human attribute, and one that enters largely into the daily acts, the exceptional manifestations of skill, and many habits and usages of life: the fact is indisputable that, whether we ascribe its prevalence solely to education, or assign its origin to some organic difference, the delicacy of the sense of touch, and the manipulative skill and mobility of the right hand, in the majority of cases, so far exceeds that of the left that a term borrowed from the former expresses the general idea of dexterity. That education has largely extended the preferential use of the right hand is undoubted. That it has even unduly tended to displace the left hand from the exercise of its manipulative function, I fully believe. But so far as appears, in the preference of one hand for the execution of many special operations, the choice seems, by general consent, without any concerted action, to have been that of the right.

The proofs of the antiquity of this consensus present themselves in ever-increasing amplitude, leading finally to an investigation of traces appar