Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
"A was again coming home from India, on leave; the ship did not
arrive for some days after it was due; the twin brother B had come
up from his quarters to receive A, and their old mother was very
nervous. One morning A rushed in saying, 'Oh, mother, how are you?'
Her answer was, 'No, B, it's a bad joke; you know how anxious I am!'
and it was a little time before A could persuade her that he was the
real man."
Enough has been said to prove that an extremely close personal
resemblance frequently exists between twins of the same sex; and that,
although the resemblance usually diminishes as they grow into
manhood and womanhood, some cases occur in which the diminution of
resemblance is hardly perceptible. It must be borne in mind that it
is not necessary to ascribe the divergence of development, when it
occurs, to the effect of different nurtures, but it is quite
possible that it may be due to the late appearance of qualities
inherited at birth, though dormant in early life, like gout. To this
I shall recur.
There is a curious feature in the character of the resemblance
between twins, which has been alluded to by a few correspondents; it
is well illustrated by the following quotations. A mother of twins
says:--
"There seemed to be a sort of interchangeable likeness in expression,
that often gave to each the effect of being more like his brother
than himself."
Again, two twin brothers, writing to me, after analysing their
points of resemblance, which are close and numerous, and pointing
out certain shades of difference, add--
"These seem to have marked us through life, though for a while, when
we were first separated, the one to go to business, and the other to
college, our respective characters were inverted; we both think that
at that time we each ran into the character of the other. The proof
of this consists in our own recollections, in our correspondence by
letter, and in the views which we then took of matters in which we
were interested."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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