Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
Martin sprang on his grandchild, declaring that he was the thief,
and would have strangled him if he had not been prevented; he then
became steadily worse, complained of violent pains in his head, went
out of doors on some excuse, and tried to drown himself in the river
Steir, but was forcibly stopped by his son, who had watched and
followed him. He was then taken to an asylum by gendarmes, where he
died in three hours. Francois, on his part, calmed down on the
morning of the 24th, and employed the day in inquiring about the
robbery. By a strange chance, he crossed his brother's path at the
moment when the latter was struggling with the gendarmes; then he
himself became maddened, giving way to extravagant gestures and using
incoherent language (similar to that of his brother). He then asked
to be bled, which was done, and afterwards, declaring himself to be
better, went out on the pretext of executing some commission, but
really to drown himself in the River Steir, which he actually did,
at the very spot where Martin had attempted to do the same thing a
few hours previously.
The next point which I shall mention in illustration of the
extremely close resemblance between certain twins is the similarity
in the association of their ideas. No less than eleven out of the
thirty-five cases testify to this. They make the same remarks on the
same occasion, begin singing the same song at the same moment, and
so on; or one would commence a sentence, and the other would finish
it. An observant friend graphically described to me the effect
produced on her by two such twins whom she had met casually. She said:
"Their teeth grew alike, they spoke alike and together, and said the
same things, and seemed just like one person." One of the most
curious anecdotes that I have received concerning this similarity of
ideas was that one twin, A, who happened to be at a town in Scotland,
bought a set of champagne glasses which caught his attention, as a
surprise for his brother B; while, at the same time, B, being in
England, bought a similar set of precisely the same pattern as a
surprise for A. Other anecdotes of a like kind have reached me about
these twins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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