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It would explain this and at the same time it seems probable from other considerations if we found that right-handedness was first used for expression before speech; and that speech has arisen from the setting aside, for further development, of the area in the brain first used for right-handedness. Musical expression has its seat in or near the same lobe of the brain.
The papers used in the experiments given above were coloured blotting-papers. The omission of yellow is due to the absence, in the neighbourhood, of a satisfactory yellow paper. The method now described may be further illustrated by the following experiments on the use of the hands by the young child. The Origin of Right-handedness.
We should expect, therefore, that these results would be confirmed by experiments on other children, and this is the only way their correctness can be tested. If, when tested, they should be found correct, they would be sufficient answer to several of the theories of right-handedness heretofore urged, as has been already remarked.
It is of physiological interest as showing that “dextral pre-eminence” or right-handedness was prevalent in earliest historic times, though it is unknown in any lower animal. The thoughtful dwellers in Farsistan also developed a religion close to man’s wants by dividing the gods into those who aid and those who harm him, subject the one class to Ahura-Mazda, the other to Anya-Mainyus.
I think when we have seen the reasons which make civilised man now right-handed, we shall also see why it would be highly undesirable for him to return, after so many ages of practice, to the condition of his undeveloped stone-age ancestors. The very beginning of our modern right-handedness goes back, indeed, to the most primitive savagery.
Right-handedness had accordingly developed under pressure of muscular effort in the sixth and seventh months, and showed itself also under the influence of a strong colour stimulus to the eye. Up to this time the child had not learned to stand or to creep; hence the development of one hand more than the other is not due to differences in weight between the two longitudinal halves of the body.
Another theory maintains that the development of right-handedness is due to differences in weight of the two lateral halves of the body; this tends to bring more strain on one side than the other, and to give more exercise, and so more development, to that side. This evidently assumes that children are not right or left-handed before they learn to stand.
Existing savages, and our own young children, whenever they draw a figure in profile, be it of man or beast, with their right hand, draw it almost always with the face or head turned to the left, in accordance with this natural human instinct. Their doing so is a test of their perfect right-handedness.
The rise of the phenomenon must be sought, therefore, in more deep-going facts of physiology than such theories supply. Furthermore, if we go lower in the animal scale than man, analogies for the kinds of experience which are urged as reasons for right-handedness are not present; animals do not carry their young, nor pat them to sleep, nor do animals shake hands!
It has frequently been held that a child's right-handedness arises from the nurse's or mother's constant method of carrying it, the child's hand which is left free being more exercised, and so becoming stronger. This theory is ambiguous as regards both mother and child. The mother, if right-handed, would carry the child on the left arm, in order to work with the right arm.
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