CHAPTER XXI

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THE HAND.

Man is the only animal that has a hand. The monkey has something like a hand; but, if you watch him as he takes things, you will see that it is a very awkward and bungling thing compared with your hand.

[Sidenote: The hand a set of machinery.]

The hand is often said to be a wonderful _instrument_. I would rather say that it is a wonderful _set of machinery_. An instrument or tool is commonly fitted to do only one thing, as a chisel, a spade, a saw, etc. But how many and how different things can be done with the hand!

[Sidenote: It does both coarse and fine work.]

Let us look at some things that the hand can do. See the blacksmith wielding the heavy hammer; how strongly his hand grasps the handle! See how it is done. The fingers and thumb are bent by those large muscles that are up in the arm. Now these same fingers, that grasp the hammer so strongly, and do this heavy work, can be trained to do work of the lightest and finest kind. They can take hold of the pen and write. They can move the tool of the engraver, making those fine lines that you sometimes see.

In the machines that man makes there is no such changing from coarse, heavy work to that which is fine and delicate. A machine that does heavy work does that only, and one that does fine work does that only. No man ever made a machine that would pull a large rope one moment, and the next pull a fine thread, and do the one just as well as the other. But that wonderful machine, the hand, can do this. It can grasp the rope firmly, and yet can take between its thumb and finger a thread so fine that you can hardly see it.

[Sidenote: Variety of things done by the hand.]

But the difference in the work of the hand is not merely in coarseness and fineness. It can do a great many different kinds of coarse work and a great many different kinds of fine work. The hand works very differently with different things. See how differently it manages a rope, a hammer, a spade, a hoe, a knife and fork, etc. It takes hold of them in different ways to work them. And then, as to fine work, how differently it manages a pen, an engraver’s tool, a thread, a needle, etc.

If you watch people as they do different things, you can get some idea of the variety of the work that the hand can perform. See how differently the fingers are continually placed as one is playing on an instrument. You can see very well what a variety of shapes the hand can be put into if you observe a deaf and dumb person talking with his fingers. On the following page is a representation of the different ways in which the letters are made.

[Sidenote: The most common things that it does wonderful.]

[Sidenote: Variety of shapes which the hand takes in the deaf and dumb alphabet.]

[Illustration]

[Sidenote: A buttoning machine.]

The most common things that we do with our hands are really wonderful. Watch one as he is buttoning up his coat: how easily his fingers do it; and yet it is a wonderful performance. Suppose a man should try to make a machine, shaped like the hand, that would do the same thing, do you think that he would succeed? It would be very strange if he did. Suppose, however, that, after working a long time, he did really succeed, and that you saw his machine, with its fingers and thumb, put a button through a button-hole in the same way that you do it with your fingers. Do you think that it could manage buttons of all sizes, large, middle-sized, and small? No; it could only button those that are of one size. The different sized buttons would require different machines; and, besides, a machine that could button up could not unbutton. But your hand is a machine that, besides buttoning and unbuttoning buttons of various sizes, is doing continually a great variety of things that machines can not do. No machine can take up a pen and write, or even move a stick about as your hand can. When some ingenious man makes a machine that can do any one thing like what the hand does, it excites our wonder, and we say, How curious! how wonderful! how much like a hand it works!

[Sidenote: The hand an instrument of feeling.]

But the hand is not merely a machine that performs a great many motions; it is also an instrument with which the mind feels things. And what a delicate instrument it is for this purpose! How small are the things that you sometimes feel with the point of the finger! As you pass it over a smooth surface, the slightest roughness is felt. A great deal of knowledge, as I told you in