ambidextry

Ambidextrousness.

On pages 335-345 he pays his respects to the movement for the education of children in “ambidextry,” which has some vogue both in Europe and in America. He regards it as "false and useless," and as possessing "no intellectual advantages at all." The best thing to do is to "let the lefthanded die out," as nature evidently intends, having bonused the righthanded beyond power of recall.

Righthandedness for one thing, lefthandedness for another, occurs, within the group of righthanded and lefthanded, and even ambidextry also.

Two-sidedness; embracing or engaging in both sides of a dichotomy.

John, however, howsoever inconsistent in his farming, was never so with respect to his character; having always and avowedly piqued himself more on his knack at ambidextry, than congruity or discernment; and frequently, while in times of scarcity and dearth, he with one hand supplicates in his churches the Author of all good gifts for plenty and cheapness, he with the other takes care to prevent their possibility, by withholding in various ways their means, and not giving the plough free admission to his immense tracts of wastes, nor withdrawing it from those of aration till they are completely exhausted of all the fertilizing gifts of heaven; he thus renders them both comparatively useless.

The anonymous Song on the Venality of the Judges, which dates from this period, regarded those sitting in judgment as 'seduced from justice' by partiality and bribes and those pleading in court as guilty of 'ambidextry', i.e. of accepting gifts not just from their own client, but from both parties ('pleaders. . . take with both hands').