CHAPTER I THE HAND 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. In so far as the hand is to be recognised as the organ of touch or feeling, it plays a different part from the other organs of the senses. It is no mere passive recipient of impressions, but selects the objects to be subjected to its discrimination, and communicates the results to the central organ: the seat of intelligence. As a responsive agent of the mind it is the productive artificer. In its independent estimate of form and texture it performs for all of us the function of sight in the darkness; and to the blind it is an eye wherewith they are enabled to receive correct impressions of external nature, and to read for themselves the lettered page. The hand, moreover, has an utterance of its own. The un premeditated actions of the orator harmoniously emphasise his speech; and in strong emotional excitement, the movements of the hands are scarcely less expressive than the tongue. There are, indeed, occasions when its symbolic speech needs no audible accompaniment. The repelling action of the outstretched palm, accompanied by the averted head, can dispense with words; and the hand in benediction has no need of them. The imagination realises the amplest significance of such gestures, as in the final parting of Arthur and Guinevere— She in the darkness o'er her fallen head Perceived the waving of his hands that blest. In discussing the specialty of right-handedness, either as an expansion or limitation of the use of the hand, it is not necessary to enlarge on the distinctive anatomical relations of the human hand to the fore-limb of other animals; for if the final results here set forth are correct, the preferential and instinctive employment of one limb and extremity is not an exclusive attribute of man Nevertheless the hand is one of the most characteristic human features. The practical distinction between man and any approximate living creature lies in the fact that the most highly developed anthropoid, while in a sense four-handed, has no such delicate instrument of manipulation as that which distinguishes man from all other animals. In most monkeys there is a separate and movable |