Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/738

 MC gee] THE BEGINNING OF MA THEM A TICS 669

of demotic interactions leading to the survival of the right-handed and the extinction of the left-handed throughout the earlier eons of human development. A clue to the demotic process is easily found in widespread horror of left-handedness, especially among primitive peoples ; the clue becomes definite in the light of sys- tematic infanticide among many tribes, whereby all manner of natal deformity is eliminated ; it becomes conclusive in the light of the customs of those American tribes who habitually eliminate the sinistral offspring as monsters betokening the wrath of the powers. So, apparently initiated by slight physiologic difference and unquestionably intensified by demotic selection, right-handed- ness became even more predominant among primitive men than among their less superstitious descendants ; the dexter and dex- trous hand came to be exalted in scores of languages as " The One That Knows How " or " The Wise One," while the sinister hand was degraded by linguistic opprobrium unto a symbol of evil and outer darkness. Naturally and necessarily the bilaterally symmetric division of the Ego into Right and Left fell into super- position with the antecedent Face-Back concept, and produced a quatern notion such as that expressed in the Cult of the Quar- ters. Happily this transition is crystallized in the language of the Pitta-Pitta of Queensland, which possesses directional inflec- tions indicating Front and Back reckoned from the Ego ; and it is especially significant (in connection with the bimanual count inferred by W. E. Roth) that the inflection for Front applies also to (right ?) Side. 1 And the quatern concept, born of unrecorded myriads of experiences, is much more than an idle fantasy of kiva and camp-fire. Intensified by the strongest motives of primitive life, it doubtless attained maximum strength before writing arose to divide its functions; yet, despite the decadence of millen- niums, it is still expressed in two of the strongest instincts of higher humanity — the instinct of right-handedness, and the con- comitant instinct of orientation.

1 Ethnological Studies, op. cit., p. 2.

�� �