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.
The last point to which I shall allude regards the tastes and
dispositions of the thirty-five pairs of twins. In sixteen cases--that
is, in nearly one half of them--these were described as closely similar;
in the remaining nineteen they were much alike, but subject to certain
named differences. These differences belonged almost wholly to such
groups of qualities as these: The one was the more vigorous, fearless,
energetic; the other was gentle, clinging, and timid: or, again, the one
was more ardent, the other more calm and gentle; or again, the one was
the more independent, original, and self-contained; the other the more
generous, hasty, and vivacious. In short the difference was always that
of intensity or energy in one or other of its protean forms: it did not
extend more deeply into the structure of the characters. The more
vivacious might be subdued by ill health, until he assumed the character
of the other; or the latter might be raised by excellent health to that
of the former. The difference is in the key-note, not in the melody.
It follows from what has been said concerning the similar dispositions
of the twins, the similarity in the associations of their ideas, of
their special ailments, and of their illnesses generally, that the
resemblances are not superficial, but extremely intimate. I have only
two cases altogether of a strong bodily resemblance being accompanied by
mental diversity, and one case only of the converse kind. It must be
remembered that the conditions which govern extreme likeness between
twins are not the same as those between ordinary brothers and sisters (I
may have hereafter to write further about this); and that it would be
wholly incorrect to generalize from what has just been said about the
twins, that mental and bodily likeness are invariably co-ordinate; such
being by no means the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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