The matured capacity of the hand is the necessary concomitant of man’s intellectual development; not only enabling him to fashion all needful tools, and to place at a disadvantage the fiercest of his assailants armed by nature with formidable weapons of assault; but also to respond no less effectually to every prompting of the æsthetic faculty in the most delicate artistic creations. The very arts of the ingenious nest-makers, the instinctive weavers or builders, the spider, the bee, the ant, or the beaver, place them in striking contrast to man in relation to his handiwork. He alone, in the strict sense of the term, is a manufacturer. The Quadrumana, though next to man in the approximation of their fore-limbs to hands, claim no place among the instinctive architects, weavers, or spinners. The human hand, as an instrument of constructive design or artistic skill, ranks wholly apart from all the organs employed in the production of analogous work among the lower animals. The hand of the ape accomplishes nothing akin to the masonry of the swallow, or the damming and building of the beaver. But, imperfect though it seems, it suffices for all requirements of the forest-dweller. In climbing trees, in gathering and shelling nuts or pods, opening shell-fish, tearing off the rind of fruit, or pulling up roots; in picking out thorns or burs from its own fur, or in the favourite occupation of hunting for each other’s parasites: the monkey uses the finger and thumb; and in many other operations performs with the hand what is executed by the quadruped or bird less effectually by means of the mouth or bill. At first sight we might be tempted to assume that the quadrumanous mammal had the advantage of us, as there are certainly many occasions when an extra hand could be turned to useful account. But not only do man’s two hands prove greatly more serviceable for all higher purposes of manipulation than the four hands of the ape: a further specialty distinguishing him as he rises in the scale of intellectual superiority is that he seems to widen still more the divergence from the quadrumanous anthropoid by converting one hand into the favoured organ and servant of his will, while the other is relegated to a wholly subordinate place as its mere help and supplement. CHAPTER II THE EDUCATED HAND