 Section 7 of Inquiry into Human Faculty in its Development by Francis Galton This is LibriVox Recording, or LibriVox Recordings in the Public Domain. For more information on the volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 24. Nurture and Nature Man is so educable, an animal, that it is difficult to distinguish between that part of his character, which has been acquired for education in circumstance, and that which was the original kind of his constitution. His character is exceedingly complex, even in members of the simplest and purest savage race, much more is it so in civilized races, who have long since been exempted from the full vigor of natural selection and have become more mongrel in their breed than any other animal on the face of the earth. Different aspects of the melt-to-forest character of man respond to different cause from without, so the same individual and much more the same race may behave very differently at different epochs. There may have been no fundamental change of character, but a different phase or mood of it may have been evoked by special circumstances, for those persons in whom that mood is naturally dominant may, through some extent, have the opportunity of acting for the time as representatives of the race. The same nation may be seized by a military fervor one period, and by a commercial one and another. They may be humbly submissive to a monarch or become outrageous republicans. The love of art, gait, adventure, science, religion may be severely paramount at different times. One of the most notable changes that can come over a nation is from a state correspondent to that of our dark past ages into one like that of the Renaissance. In the first case the minds of men are wholly taken up with routine work and in copying what their predecessors have done. They degrade into servile imitators and submissive slaves to the past. In the second case some circumstances or idea has finally discredited the authorities that impelled intellectual growth and has unexpectedly revealed new possibilities. Then the mind of the nation is set free, a direction of research is given to it and all the exploratory and hunting instincts are awakened. These sudden areas of great intellectual progress cannot be due to any alteration in the natural faculties of the race, because there has not been time for that, but to their being directed in productive channels. Most of the leisure of the men of every nation is spent in rounds of reiterated actions. If it could be spent in continuous advance along new lines of research in unexplored regions, vast progress would be sure to be made. It has been the privilege of this generation to have had fresh fields of research pointed out to them by Darwin and to have undergone a new intellectual birth by the inspiration of his fertile genius. A pure love of change at dig, according to some law of contrast, has yet imperfectly understood, especially characterised as civilised man. After a long continuance of one mood, he wants to throw himself into another pleasure of setting faculties into action that have been long disused, but not yet paralysed by disuse, and which have been fidgety for employment. He has so many opportunities for procuring change, and is so complex in nature that he easily learns to neglect a more deeply seated feeling that innovation is wicked and which is manifest in children and barbarians. To a civilised man, the varied interests of civilisation or temptations in as many directions, changes in dress and implications of all kinds are comparatively inexpensive to him owing to the cheapness of manufacturers and their variety. Change of scene is easy from the conveniences of locomotion, but a barbarian has none of these facilities. His interests are few, his dress, as it is, his intended to stand the wear and tear of years, and all whether it is relatively very costly and is an investment on my say of his capital rather than his income. The invention of his people is sluggish and their arts are few, consequently he is before it is taught to be conservative. His ideas are fixed and he becomes scandalised even at the suggestion of change. The difficulty of indulging in variety is incomparably greater among the rest of the animal world. If a pehan should take it into her head that bias would be prettier than eyes in the tail of her spouse, she could not possibly get what she wanted. It would require hundreds of generations which the pehens generally concurred in the same view before sexual selection would affect the desired alteration. The feminine delights of indulging her purpose in matters of ornament is a luxury denied to the females of the brute world, and the law that rules changes in taste, if studied at all, can only be ascertained by observing the alterations of fashion in civilised communities. There are long sequences of changes in character which, like the tunes of a musical stuffed box, are regulated by internal mechanism. There are such as those of Shakespeare's Seven Ages and others due to the progress of various diseases. The lives of birds are characterised by long chains of these periodic sequences. They are mostly mute in winter, after that they begin to sing. Some species are seized in the early part of the year with so strong a passion for migrating that if confined in a cage they will beat themselves to death against its bars, followed courtship and paring, accompanied by the excess of ferocity among the males and severe fighting for the females. Next an impulse seizes them to build nests, an desire for incubation, then one for the feeding of their young. After this is a newly arisen Tennessee, two gregariousness groups them into large flocks and finally they fly away into the place whence they came, go to by similar instinct to that which drove them forth a few months previously. These remarkable changes are mainly due to the conditions of their natures because they persist with more or less regularity under older circumstances. Nevertheless, they are not wholly independent of circumstance because the period of migration, though nearly coincident in successive years, is modified to some small extent by the weather and condition of the particular year. The interaction of nature and its circumstances is very close and it is impossible to separate them with precision. Nature acts before birth, during every stage of embryonic and pre-embryonic existence causing the potential faculties at the time of birth to be in some degree the effect of nature. We need not, however, be hypocritical about distinctions. We know the bulk of the respective provinces of nature and nature are totally different, although the frontier between them may be uncertain, and we are perfectly justified in attempting to appraise their relative importance. I shall begin with describing some of the principal influences that may safely be ascribed to education or other circumstances, all of which I include under comprehensive term of nature. Chapter 25. Associations The furniture of a man's mind shortly consists of his recollections and the bonds that unite them, as all this is a fruit of experience and must differ greatly in different minds according to their individual experiences. I have endeavored to take stock of my own mental furniture in the way described in the next chapter, in which we will be seen how large a part consists of childish recollections, testifying to the permanent effect of many of the results of early education. The same fact has been strongly brought out by the replies from correspondents who might question on their mental imagery. It was frequently stated that the mental image invariably evoked by certain words was some event of charged experience or fancy. Thus one correspondent of no mean literary and philosophical power recollects a left hand by a mental reference to the rocking horse which always stood by the side of the nursery wall with his head in the same direction and had to be mounted from the side next to the wall. Another, a politician, historian and scholar, refers all his dates to the mental image of a nursery diagram of the history of the world, which has since developed huge bosses to support his later acquired information. Our abstract ideas have been mostly drawn from external experiences. Their character also must depend upon the events of our individual histories. For example, the spoken words house and home must awaken ideas to write from the houses and the homes with which the hero is, in one way or other, acquainted and these could not be the same to persons of various social positions and places of residence. The character of our abstract ideas therefore depends to a considerable degree on our nurture. I dived, however, whether abstract idea is a correct phrase in many of the cases in which it is used and whether cumulative idea would not be more appropriate. The ideal faces obtained by the method of composite portrait appear to have a great deal in common with the so-called abstract ideas. The composite portraits consist, as was explained of numerous superimposed pictures, forming a cumulative result in which the features that are common toward the likenesses are clearly seen. Those that are common to a few are relatively faint and are more or less overlooked, while those that are peculiar to single individuals lead no sensible trace at all. This analogy, which I ported out in a memoir on generic images has been extended and confirmed by subsequent experience of the process. One objection to my view was that our so-called generalizations are commonly no more the representative cases. A recollection has been apt to be unduly influenced by particular events and not by the totality of what we have seen, that the reason why some one recollection has prevailed is that the case was sharply defined or had something unusual about it, or that our frame of mind was at the same time of observation susceptible to that particular kind of impression. I have had exactly the same difficulties with the composites. If one of the individual portraits has sharp outlines or if it is unlike the rest, or if the illumination is temporarily strong, it will assert itself unduly in the result. The cases seem to me exactly analogous. I get over my photographic difficulty very easily by throwing the sharp portrait a little out of focus by eliminating such portraits as have exceptional features and by turning down the illumination to a standard intensity. Chapter 26. Psychometric Experiments When we attempt to trace the first steps in each operation of our lines, we are usually balked by the difficulty of keeping watch without embarrassing the freedom of its action. The difficulty is much more than the common or well-known one of attending to two things at once. It is especially due to the fact that the elementary operations of the mind are exceedingly faint and evanescent and that it requires the utmost painstaking to watch them properly. It would seem impossible to give the required attention to the processes of thought, yet to think as freely as if the mind had been in no way preoccupied. The peculiarity of the experiments I am about to describe is that I have succeeded in innovating this difficulty. My method consists in allowing the mind to play briefly for a very brief period until a couple or so of ideas have passed through it, and then, while the traces or records of those ideas are still lingering in the brain, there is no attention upon them with a sudden and complete awakening. To arrest, to scrutinize them, and to record their exact appearance. Afterwards, I collect the records at leisure and discuss them, and draw conclusions. It must be understood that the second of the two ideas was never derived from the first, but always directly from the original object. This was ensured by absolutelywithstanding all temptation to every. I do not mean that the first idea was of necessity. A simple elementary thought, sometimes it was a glance down a familiar line of associations, sometimes it was a well-remembered mental attitude or mode of feeling. But I mean that I was never so far indulged in as to displace the object that had suggested it from being the primary top of attention. I must add that I found the experiments to be extremely trying and irksome, and that required much resolution to go through with them using the scrupulous care that demanded. Nevertheless, the results well repaid the trouble. They gave me an interesting and unexpected view of the number of the operations of the mind and of the obscure depths in which they took place, of which I'd been little conscious before. The general impression they have left upon me is like that which many of us have experienced when the basement of our house happens to be under thorough sanitary repairs, and we realize that the first time the complex system of drains and gas and water pipes, blues, bellwies and so forth, upon which I've covered pans, of which are usually hidden at a site, and with whose existence so long as they acted well, we had never troubled ourselves. The first experiments I made were imperfect, but sufficient to inspire me with keen interest in the matter, and suggested the form of procedure that I have already partially described. My first experiments were these. On several occasions, but notably on one when I felt myself unusually capable of the kind of effort required, I walked leisurely along Paul Maul, a distance of 450 eyes, doing which time I scrutinized with attention every successful object that caught my eyes, and I allowed my attention to rest on it until one or two thoughts had arisen through direct association with that object. Then I took very brief mental note of them and passed on to the next object. I never allowed my mind to ramble. The number of objects viewed was, I think, about 300, for I had subsequently repeated the same walk under similar conditions and endeavoured to estimate their number. With that result, it was impossible for me to recall, in other than the vaguest way, the numerous ideas that had passed through my mind. But of this, at least, I am sure, that samples of my whole life had passed before me, that many bygone incidents, which I never suspected to have formed part of my stop of thoughts, had been glance at as objects too familiar to awaken the attention. I saw it once that the brain was vastly more active than I had previously believed it to be, and 12, and I was perfectly amazed at the unexpected width of the field of its everyday operations. But after an interval of some days, during which I kept my mind from dwelling on my first experiences, in order that it might retain as much freshness as possible for a second experiment, I repeated the walk and was shocked just as much as before by the variety of the ideas that presented themselves and the number of events to which they referred, about which I had never consciously occupied myself of late years. But my attention at the activity of the mind was seriously diminished by another observation, which I then made, namely, that there had been a very great deal of repetition of thought. The actors in my mental stage were indeed very numerous, but by no means so numerous as I had imagined. They now seem to be something like the actors in theaters where large positions are represented, who march off one side of the stage and, going round by the back, come on again to the other. I recording cast about for me an self laying hold of these fleeting thoughts, and submitted them to statistical analysis to find out more about their tendency to repetition in other matters, and the method I finally adopted was the one already mentioned. I selected a list of suitable words and wrote them on different small sheets of paper, taking care to dismiss them from my thoughts, were not engaged upon them, knowing some days to elapse before I began to use them. I laid one of the sheets with audio precautions under a book, but not wholly covered by it, so that when I leaned forward I could see one of the words, being previously quite ignorant of what the word would be. Also I held a small chronograph, which I started by pressing a spring the moment the word caught my eye, and which stopped of itself the incidentalist's spring, and this I did so soon as a direct association with the word had arisen in my mind. I found that I could not manage to recollect more than two ideas with the needed precision, at least not in general way, but sometimes several ideas occurred so nearly together, that I was able to record three or even four of them, while sometimes I only managed one. The second ideas were, as I have already said, never derived from the first, but always direct from the word itself. For I kept my attention fairly fixed on the word, and the associated ideas were seen only by a half-glance. When the two ideas had occurred I stopped the chronograph and wrote them down, and the time they occupied. I soon got to the way of doing all of this in a very methodical and automatic manner, keeping the mind perfectly calm and neutral, but intent, and, as it were, at full clock and on-hair trigger before displaying the word. There was no disturbance occasioned by thinking of the forthcoming of the mind the moment before the chronograph was stopped, my feeling before stopping it was simply that I had delayed long enough, and this in no way interfered with the free action of the mind. I found no trouble in ensuring the complete fairness of the experiment, but using a number of little precautions highly necessary to describe that practice quickly suggested, but it was a most repunctant and laborious work, and it was only by strong self-control that I went through my schedule according to program. The list of words that I finally secured was 75 in number, though I began with more. I went through them in four separate occasions under very different circumstances in England and abroad, and at intervals of about a month. In no case were the associations governed to any degree worth recording by remembering what had occurred to me on previous occasions, for I found that the process itself had great influence in discharging the memory of what had just been engaged in, and I of course took care between the experiments, and had to let my thoughts revert to the words. The results seemed to me to be as trustworthy as any other statistical series that had been collected with equal care. On throwing these results into a common statistical hotchpot, I first examined into the rate at which these associated ideas were formed. It took a total time of 650 seconds to form the 505 ideas, that is at about the rate of 50 a minute or 3000 in an hour. This would be miserably slow work in reverie, or wherever the thought follows the lead of each association that successfully presents itself. In the present case, much time was lost in mentally taking the word in owing to the quite unobtrusive way in which I found it necessary to bring it into view, so as not to distract the thoughts. Moreover, a substantive standing by itself was usually the equivalent of too abstract an idea for us to conceive properly without delay. Thus, it is very difficult to get a quick conception of the word carriage, because there are so many different kinds two-wheeled, four-wheeled, open and closed, and all of them in so many different possible positions that the mind possibly hesitates amidst an obscure sense of many alternatives that cannot blend together. But limit the idea to say a Laudale and the mental association to class itself more quickly. Say a Laudale coming down the street to opposite the door and an image of many blended Laudales that have done so forms itself without the least hesitation. Next, I found that my list of 75 words gone over four times had given rise to ideas in 13 cases of puzzle in which nothing sufficiently definite to note occurred within the brief maximum period of about four seconds that I allowed myself to any single trial. Of these 500 and 5 only 289 were different. The precise proportions in which the 505 were distributed in quadruplets, triplets, doublets or singles is shown in the uppermost lines of Table 1. The same facts are given under another form in the lower lines of the table which show how the 289 different ideas were distributed in cases of four-fold, treble, double or single occurrences. Table 1 is displayed on a page titled Recurrent Associations. I was fully prepared to find much iteration in my ideas but I'd little expected that out of every 100 words, 23 would give rise to exactly the same association in every one of the four trials. 21 to the same association in 3 out of 4 and so on. The experiments having been purposely conducted under very different conditions of time in local circumstances. This shows much less variety in the mental stock of the ideas than I had expected. It makes us feel that the roadways of our minds are worn into very deep ruts. I concluded from the proved number of faint and barely conscious thoughts and form the proved iteration of them that the mind is perpetually travelling over familiar ways without our memory retaining any impression of its excursions. Its footsteps are so light and fleeting that it is only by such experiments that I have described that we can learn anything about them. It is apparently always engaged in mumbling over its old stores. And if any one of these is wholly neglected for a while it is apt to be forgotten perhaps irrecoverably. It is by no means the keyness of interest and of the attention when first observing an object that it fixes it in the recollection. We pour over the pages of a Bradshaw and study the trains for a particular journey with the greatest interest. But the event passes by and the hours and other facts which we once so equally considered become absolutely forgotten. So in games of wist and a large number of similar instances as I understand it, the subject may have a continued living interest in order to retain and abide in place in the memory. The mind must refer to it frequently, but whether it does so consciously or unconsciously is not perhaps a matter of much importance. Otherwise, as a general rule the recollection sinks and appears to be utterly drowned in the waters of Leth. The instances according to my personal experience are very rare, even though it is not very satisfactory in which some event recalls a memory that had laid absolutely dormant for many years. In this very series of experiments a recollection which I thought had entirely lapsed appeared under no less than three different aspects of different occasions. It was this, when I was a boy and my father, it was anxious that I should learn something of physical science which was then never taught at school, arranged with the owner of a large chemist shop to let me dabble at chemistry for a few days in his laboratory. I had not thought of this fact so far as I was aware for many years but in scrutinising the fleeting associations called up by the various words I traced to mental visual images an alembic and a particular range of tables and light and one mental sense of smell, chlorine gas. To that very laboratory I recognised that these images appear familiar to me but I had not thought of their origin. I doubt of some strange conjunction of circumstances that suddenly record those three associations at the same time with perhaps two or three other claddle matters which may be still living in my memory of which I do not as yet identify a mental perception of starting vividness would be the result and I should have falsely imagined that it had supernaturally as it were started into life from an entire oblivion extending over many years. Probably many persons would have registered such a case as evidence that things once perceived can never wholly vanish from the recollection like that in the hour of death or under some excitement. Every event of a past life may reappear to this view I entirely dissent. Forgetfulness appears absolute in the vast majority of cases and I suppose recollections of a past life are I believe no more than a large number of episodes in it to be reckoned perhaps in hundreds of thousands but certainly not intensive hundreds of thousands that have escaped oblivion. Every one of the fleeting half-conscious thoughts that were the subject to my experience admitted of being vivified became attention all by some appropriate association but I strongly suspect that ideas which have long since since fleets through the brain are into the absence of current associations to call them up disappear wholly a comparison of old memories with a newly met friend of one's boyhood about the events we then witnessed together show how much we had each of us forgotten are recollections to not tell me. Actors and incidents that seem to have been of primary importance in those events to the one forgotten by the other. The recollection of our earlier years are in truth very scanty as any of them will find who tries to enumerate them. My associated ideas were for the most part due to my own unshared experiences and a list of them would necessarily differ widely from that which another person would draw up who might repeat my experiments. Therefore one sees clearly and I may say one can see measurably how impossible it is in a general way for two grown up persons to lay their minds side by side together in perfect accord. The same sentence cannot produce precisely the same effect on both and the first quick impressions that any given word in it may convey will differ widely in the two minds. I took pains to determine as far as feasible the dates in my life of which each of the associated ideas was first attached to the word. There were 124 cases in which identification was satisfactory and they were distributed as in Table 2. Table 2 is displayed on the page relative number of associations formed at different periods of life. It will be seen from the table that out of the 48 earliest associations, no less than 12 or one quarter of them occurred in each of the four trials of the associations first formed in manhood, 10 or about one sixth of them had a similar recurrence but as to the 19 other associations first formed in quite recent times not one of them occurred in the whole of the four trials. Hence we may see the greater fixity of the earlier associations and might measurably determine the decrease of fixity as the date of their first formation becomes less remote. The large notes of the number 33 in the middle entry of the last column but one which disconcerts the run of the series is wholly due to a visual memory of places seen in manhood. I will not speak about this now as I shall have to refer to it further on. Neglecting for the moment this unique class of occurrences, it will be seen that one half of the associations date from the period of life before leaving college that may easily be imagined that many of these refer to common events in an English education. Now you further on looking through the list of all the associations it was easy to see how they are pervaded by purely English ideas and especially such are the prevalent in the stratum of English society in which I was born and bred and have subsequently lived. In illustration of this I may mention an anecdote of a matter which greatly impressed me at the time. I was staying in a country house where the very pleasant party of young and old including persons whose education and versatility was certainly not below the social average. One evening we played at a round game which consists in each of us drawing an absurd score as he or she could representing some historical event. The pictures were then shuffled and passed successfully from hand to hand. Everyone writing down independently their interpretation of the picture as to what the historical event was that the artist intended to depict by the scroll. I was astonished at the sameness of our ideas. Cases like Kenneth and the waves, the babes in the tower and the like were drawn by two and even three persons at the same time quite independently of one another showing how narrowly we are bound by the fetters of our early education. If the figures in the above table may be accepted as fairly correct for the world generally, it shows still in a measurable degree the large effect of early education in fixing our associations. It will of course be understood that I make no absurd profession of being able by these very few experiments to lay down statistical constants of universal application. But then my principal object is to show the large class and mental phenomena that I have, his row being too vague to lay hold of a myth of being caught by the firm grip of genuine statistical inquiry. The results that I have thus far given are hodgepodge results. It is necessary to sort the materials somewhat before saying more about them. After several trials I found that the associated ideas may have been divided into three main groups. First there is the imagined sound of words, as in verbal quotations or names of persons. There is frequently an apparent like memory which acted instantaneously in a meaningless way, just as a machine might act. In the next group there was every other kind of sensory, the chime of imagined bells, the shiver of remembered cold, the scent of some particular locality and much more frequently than all the rest put together, visual memory. The last part of the three groups contained what I will venture for the want of a better name to call histronic representations. It includes those cases where I either act a part in imagination or see an imagination a part acted, or most commonly by far where I am both spectator and all the actors at once in an imaginary mental theatre. Thus I feel a nascent sense of some muscular action while I simultaneously witness the puppet of my brain. A part of myself performed that action and I assume a mental attitude appropriate to the occasion. This in my case is a very frequent way of generalising. Indeed I really feel that I have secure hold of a general idea until I have translated somehow into this form. Thus the word of basement presented itself to me in one of my experiments by my mentally placing myself in a pantomic attitude of humiliation with half-closed eyes, bowed head and uplifted palms, while at the same time I was aware of myself as of a mental puppet in that position. This same word will serve to illustrate the other groups also. It also happened in connection with the basement that the word David or King David occurred to me on one occasion in each of the three out of the four trials, also that an accidental misreading, or perhaps the merely pruning association of words, a basement, brought up all four occasions the image of the foundations of a house that the builders had become upon. So much for the character of the association next as to that of the words I found after the experiments were over that the words were divisible into three distinct groups. The first contained Abbey, Aborigines, Abyss, and others that admitted of being presented under some mental image. The second group contained a basement, opponents, ablution etc. which admitted excellently of histronic representation. The third group contained the more abstract words such as afternoon, ability, ignore, which were variously and imperfectly dealt with by my mind. I give the results in the upper part of Table 3, and in order to save trouble I have reduced them to percentages in the lower lines of the table. Table 3 is displayed on the page comparison between the quality of the words and that of ideas in immediate association with them. We see from the associations of the Abbey series are nearly half of them in sense imagery and these were almost always visual. The names of persons also more frequently occurred in this series than in any other. It will be recollected that in Table 2 I drew attention to the exceptionally large number, 33 in our last column. It was perhaps 20 in excess of what would have been expected from the general run of the other figures. This was wholly due to visual imagery of scenes which I was first acquainted after reaching manhood and shows I think that the scenes of childhood and youth, though vividly impressed on the memory, are by no means numerous and may be quite thrown into the background by the abundance of after experiences. But this, as we are saying, is not the case with the other forms of association. Verbal memories of old date, such as Biblical scraps, family expressions, bits of poetry and alike are very numerous. And rise to the thought so quickly whenever anything suggests them that they commonly outstrip all competitors. Associations connected with the Abbasement series are strongly characterised by histronic ideas and by sense imagery which to a great degree merges into a histronic character. Thus the word abhorrence suggested to me on three out of the four trials an image of the attitude of Martha in the famous picture of the raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo in the National Gallery. She stands with averted head, doubly sheltering her face by her hands from even a sidelong view of the open grave. Now I could not be sure how far I saw the picture as such in my mental view, or how far I had thrown my own personality into the picture and was acting it as actors might act a mystery play by the puppets of my own brain that were part of myself. As a matter of fact I entered it upon the heading of sense imagery but it might very properly have gone to swirl the number of histronic entries. The afternoon series suggested a great preponderance of mere catch words showing how slowly I was able to realise the meaning of abstractions. The phrases intruded themselves before the thoughts became defined. It occasionally occurred that I puzzled by a wholly other word and made no entry at all. In 13 cases either this happened whilst after one idea had occurred the second was too confused and obscured to emit a record and mention of it had to be omitted in the foregoing table. These entries have forced to be shown to me the great imperfection in my generalising powers. I am sure that most persons would find the same if they made similar trials. Nothing is a sure sign of high intellectual capacity than the power of quickly seizing ideas of a very abstract nature. Commonly we grasp them very imperfectly and cling to their skirts with great difficulty. In comparing the order in which the ideas presented themselves I find that a decided precedence is assumed by histronic ideas wherever they occur that verbal associations occur first and with great quickness on many occasions but on the whole they are only a little more likely to be occur in the second and that imagery is decidedly more likely to be second in the first of the associations called up by word. In short, gesture language appeals to most quickly to my feelings. It would be very instructive to print their actual records of length made by many experimenters if records could be clubbed together and thrown into a statistical form but it would be too absurd to print one's own singly. They lay bare the foundations of a man's thoughts with curious distinctness and exhibit his mental anatomy with more vividness than he would probably care to publish to the world. It remains to summarize what has been said in the foregoing memoir. I decided to show how whole strata of mental operations that have lapsed out of ordinary consciousness amid of being dragged into light recorded and treated statistically and how the obscurity that attends the initial steps of our thoughts can thus be pierced and dissipated. Then I showed measurably the rate of which associations sprang up their character, the date of their first formation, their tendency to recurrence and their relative precedence. Also I gave an instance showing how the phenomenon of a long forgotten scene suddenly starting into consciousness admitted in many cases being explained. Perhaps the strongest of the oppressions left by these experiments regards the multifariousness of the work done by the mind in a state of half unconsciousness and a valid reason they afford for believing in existence are still a greatest strata of mental operations sunk wholly below the level of consciousness which may account for such mental phenomena as cannot otherwise be explained. We gain insight by these experiments into the marvellous number and nimbleness of our mental associations and we also learn that they are very far indeed from being infinite in their variety. We find that our working stock of ideas is narrowly limited and that the mind continuously recurs to the same instruments conducting its operations therefore its tracks necessarily become more defined and as flexibly diminished as age advances. Chapter 27 And a Chamber of Consciousness When I am engaged in trying to think anything out the process of doing so appears to me to be this. The ideas that lie at any moment within my full consciousness seem to attract their own accord the most appropriate out of a number of other ideas that are lying close at hand but imperfectly within the range of my consciousness. There seems to be a presence chamber in my mind where full consciousness holds court and where two or three ideas are at the same time in audience and at antechamber full or more or less allied ideas which is suited just beyond the full kind of consciousness. Out of this antechamber the ideas most nearly lie to those in the presence chamber appear to be summoned in a mechanical logical way and have their turn of audience. A successful progress of thought appears to depend first on a large attendance in the antechamber secondly while the presence there of no ideas except such as are strictly germane to the topic under consideration. Thirdly on the justness of the logical mechanism that issues the summons. The thronging of the antechamber is, I am convinced, altogether beyond my control. If the ideas do not appear I cannot create them nor compel them to come. The exclusion of alien ideas is accompanied by a sense of mental effort and violation whenever the topic under consideration is unattractive otherwise it proceeds automatically. For even intruding ideas finds nothing to cling to is unable to hold its place in the antechamber and slides back again. Our animal absorbed in a favourite occupation shows no sign of painful effort of attention. On the contrary he represents interruption that solicits his attention elsewhere. The consequence of all this is that the mind frequently does good work without the slightest exertion. In composition it will often produce a better effect than if it acted with effort because the essence of good composition is that the ideas should be connected by the easiest possible transitions. When a man has been thinking hard and long upon a subject he becomes temporarily familiar with certain steps of thought, certain shortcuts and certain fire-fetched associations that do not commend themselves to the minds of other persons nor indeed to his own at other times. Therefore it is better that his transitionary familiarity with them should have come to an end before he begins to write or speak. When he returns to the work after a sufficient pause he is conscious that his ideas have settled. That is, they have lost their adventurous relations to one another and stand in those in which they are lucky to reside permanently in his own mind and to exist in the minds of others. Although the brain is able to do very fair work fluently in an automatic way, and though it will of its own accord strike out sudden, happy ideas, it is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without past or present effort. The character of this effort seems to be chiefly to lie in bringing the contents of the anti-chamber more nearly within the kin of consciousness which then takes comprehensive note of all its contents and compels the logical faculty to test them seriatim before selecting the fittest for summons to the presence chamber. Extreme fluency and vivid and rapid imagination gives naturally and healthily possessed by those who rise to be great orators or literary men, for they could not have become successful in those careers without it. The curious factor already alluded to of five editors of newspapers being known to me as having Phantasmagoria points to a connection between two forms of fluency, the literary and the visual. Fluency may be also a morbid faculty being markedly increased by alcohol as poets are never tired of telling us and by various drugs and it exists in Tillerium in Sanity and states of higher emotions. The fluency of a vulgar scold is extraordinary. In preparing to write or speak upon a subject of which the details have been mastered, I gather, after some inquiry, that the usual method among persons who have the gift of fluency is a thing curiously on topics connected with it, until what I have called the anti-chamber is will filled with cognate ideas then to allow the ideas to link themselves in their own way, breaking the leakage continually and recommencing afresh, until some lie of thought has suggested itself that appears from a rapid and light glanceer to thread the chief topics together. After this the connections are brought step by step, fully into consciousness. They are short circuited here and extend there as found advisable until a firm connection is found to be established between all parts of the subject. After this is done the mental effort is over and a composition may proceed fluently in an automatic way. Though this I believe is a usual way, is by no means universal, there are very great differences in the connections under which different persons compose most readily. They seem to afford as good evidence of the variety of mental and bodily constitutions as can be met within or any other line of inquiry. It is reasonable to suggest that part, at least, of the inward responses to spiritual yearnings is of similar origins to the visions, thoughts and phrases that arise automatically when the mind is prepared itself to receive them. The devout man attunes his mind to hold the ideas. He excludes alien thoughts and he waits in what is in stillness. Gradually the darkness is lifted, the silence of the mind is broken and the spiritual responses are heard in the way so often described by devout men of all religions. This seems to me precessive and idealist to the automatic presentation of ordinary ideas to orators and literary men and to the visions of which I have spoken the chapter on that subject. Diviguality replaces individuality and the portion of the mind communicates with another portion as with a different person. Some persons and racers are naturally more imaginative than others and show their visionary tendency in every one of the respects named. They are fanciful, oratorical, political and credulous. The enthusiastic faculty is all seem to hang together. I shall occur to this in the chapter on enthusiasm. I have already pointed out the existence of a morbid form of petty. There is also a morbid condition of apparent inspiration to which imaginative women are subject, especially to suffer more or less from hysteria. It is accompanied by a very curious way of familiarity with medical men. By almost incredible acts of deceit it is found even that ladies have positions apparently above the suspicion of all the fraud and seem to associate it with a strange secret desire to attract notice. Ecstatics, series of visions and devout fasting girls await on the sly often belong to this category. Chapter 28 Early Sentiments The child is personally attached to his home, then to his school, his country and religion. Yet how entirely the particular home, school, country and religion are a matter of accident. He is born prepared to attach himself as a climbing plant is naturally disposed to climb. The kind of stick been of little importance. The models upon whom the child or boy formed himself, other boys or men whom he has been thrown amongst and whom some incidental cause he may have learned to love and respect. The everyday utterances, the likes and dislikes of his parents, the social and caste feelings, their religious persuasions are absorbed by him, their views, all those of his teachers become assimilated and made his own. If a mixed marriage should have taken place and the father should die while the children are yet young and if a question arise between the executors of his will and the mother as to the religious education of the children, application is made as a matter of course to the court of the chancery who decide that the children shall be brought up as Protestants or as Catholics as the case may be or the sons one way and the daughters the other and they are and usually remain so afterwards when free to act for themselves. It is worthy of note that many of the deaf mutes who are first taught to communicate freely with others after they had passed the periods of boyhood are asked about the religious feelings up to that time are reported to tell the same story. They say that the meaning of the church service whether they had accompanied their parents and of the kneeling to pray have been absolutely unintelligible and a standing puzzle to them. The ritual touched no chord in their untold natures that responded in unison. Very much what we fondly look upon as a natural religious sentiment is purely traditional. The word religion may fairly be applied to any group of sentiments or persuasions that are strong enough to bind us to do that which we intellectually make knowledge to be our duty and the possession of some form of religion in this larger sense of the word is of the utmost importance to moral stability. The sentiments must be strong enough to make us ashamed at the mere thought of committing and distressing during the act of committing any untruth or any uncharitable act or of neglecting what we feel to be right in order to indulge in laziness or gratify some passing desire. So long as experience shows the religion to be competent to produce this effect it seems reasonable to believe that particular dogma is comparatively of little importance but as a dogma or sentiments, whatever they be if they are not naturally instinctive must be ingrained in the character to produce their full effect. They should be instilled early in life and allowed to grow unshaken before their roots are firmly fixed. The consciousness of this fact makes the form of religious teaching in every church and create identical in one important particular though its substance may vary in every respect in subjects unconnected with sentiment the freest inquiry and the fullest deliberation are required before it is thought decorous to form a final opinion but wherever sentiments involved especially in questions of religious dogma about which there is more sentiment and more difference of opinion among wise, virtuous and truth-seeking men than about any other subject whatever, free inquiry is permanently discouraged. The religious instructor in every create is one who makes his profession to saturate his pupils with prejudice. A vast and perpetual clamour arises from the pulpits of endless proselytising sex throughout the great empire. The priests of all them crying with one consent this is our way, show your ears to the words of those who teach differently don't look at their books, do not even mention their names except to scoff at them. They are damnable. Have faith in what I tell you and save your souls. In which of these conflicting doctrines are we to place our faith if we are not to hear all sides and to rely upon our own judgement in the end? Are we to understand that it is the duty of man to be credulous in accepting whatever the priest in whose neighbourhood he happens to reside may say? Is it to believe whatever his parents may have lovingly taught him? There are a vast number of foolish men and women in the world who marry and have children and because they deal lovingly with their children does not at all follow that they can instruct them wisely to have faith in what the wisest men of all ages have found peace in believing. The Catholic phrase quod semto, quod ubiqu, quod omnibus that which has been believed at all times in all places and by all men has indeed a fine rolling sound but where is a dogma that satisfies its requirements? Or is it such and such really good and wise men with whom you are acquainted and whom it may be you have the privilege of knowing? Have lived lives through the guidance of these dogmas? How can you, who are many grades there in good work, incapacitated and inexperienced, presume to set up your opinion against theirs? Their reply is that it is a matter of history and notoriety, that other, very good, capable and inexperienced men have led and are leading consistent lives under the guidance of totally different dogmas and as some of them a few generations back would have probably burned your modern hero erratic if he had lived in their times and could have got hold of him. Also that men, however eminent in goodness intellect and experience may be deeply prejudiced and that their judgment in matters where their prejudices are involved cannot, henceforth, be trusted. Watchers, as electricians know their costs are liable to have their steelwork accidentally magnetized and the best chronometer under those conditions can never again be trusted to keep correct time. Lastly, we are told to have faith in our consciousness where we know now a great deal more about consciousness than formally. Ethnologists have studied the manifestations of consciousness in different people and do not find that they are consistent. Conscious is now known to be partially transmitted by inheritance in the way and under the conditions clearly explained by Mr Darwin and partially to be in unsuspected results of early education. The value of inherited consciousness lies in it being the organized results of the social experiences of many generations and so far as it expresses the experience of generations whose habits differ from our own. The doctrine of evolution shows that no race can be in perfect harmony with its surroundings. The latter are continually changing or the organism of the race hobbles after, family trying to overtake them. Therefore the inherited part of consciousness cannot be an infallible guide and the acquired part of it may, under the influence of dogma, be a very bad one. The history of fanaticism shows too clearly that this is not only a theory but a fact. Happy the child especially in these inquiring days who has been taught a religion that mainly rests on the moral obligations between man and man in domestic and national life and which so far as it is necessarily dogmatic rests chiefly upon the proper interpretation of facts about which there is no dispute, namely on her habitual occurrences which are always open to observation and which form the basis of so-called natural religion. It would be instructed to make a study of the working religion of good and able men of all nations in order to discover the real motives by which they were severely animated. Men, I mean, who have been tried by both prosperity university and had born the test who, while they led lives full of interest to themselves, were beloved by their own family noted among those with whom they had business relations for their probity and conciliatory ways are honoured by a wider circle for their unselfish furtherance of the public good, such men exist of many face and in many races. Another interesting and cognate inquiry would be into the motives that have suffice to induce men who are leading happy lives to meet death willingly at a time when they were not particularly excited. Probably the number of instances to be found, say among Muslimans who affirm beliefs in the joys of Muhammad's Paradise, will not be more numerous than among the Zulus who have no belief in any Paradise at all but influenced by a marginal honour and patriotism. There is an oriental phrase, as I have been told, that the fear of the inevitable death is a European melody approach of terror at any object is quickly taught if it is taught consistently. Whether the terror be reasonable or not, there are a few more stupid creatures in fish, but they notoriously soon learn to be frightened at any newly introduced method of capture, say by an artificial fly, which at first their comrades took greedily, some one fish may have seen others caught, and have learned to take fright at the fly. Whenever he saw it again, he would betray his terror by some instinctive gesture, which would be seen and understood by others, and so instruction in distrusting the fly appears to spread. All gregarious animals are extremely quick learning terrors from one another, is a condition of their existence that they should do so, as was explained at length in a previous chapter. Their safety lies in mutual intelligence and support, when most of them are browsing and few are always watching, and at least, signal of alarm the whole herd takes fright simultaneously. Gregarious animals are quickly alive to their mutual signals. It is beautiful to watch great flocks of birds as they wheel in their flight, and suddenly slow the flash of all their wings against the sky, as they simultaneously and certainly change their direction. Much the tameness or wilderness of their character is probably due to the placidity or to the frequent types of alarm of the mother, while she was rearing it. I was greatly struck with some evidence I happened to meet with, of the pervading atmosphere of alarm and suspicion in which the children of criminal parents are brought up, and which, in combination with their inherent disposition, makes them, on the opinion of many observers, so different to other children. The evidence of which I speak lay in a place where inmates of the Princess Mary Village Homes, for which I had the opportunity, thanks to the kindness of the superintendent Mrs. Meredith, of hearing and seeing extracts. They were full of such phases as mind you not say anything about this, though the matters referred to were, to all appearance, unimportant. The writings of Dante on the horrible torments that dammed, and the realistic pictures of the same subject in frescoes and other pictures of the same date, showing the flames of flesh hooks, and the harrows indicate the transforming effect of those cruel times, fifteen generations ago, upon the disposition of men, revenge and torture had been so commonly practiced by rulers that they seemed to be appropriate tributes of every high authority, and the artists of those days saw no incongruity in supposing that a supremely powerful master, however beneficially might be, would make freest use of them. A version is taught as easily as terror when the object of it is neutral and not especially attractive to an unprejudiced taste. I can testify in my own person that the somewhat rapidly acquired and long retained fancies concerning the clean and unclean upon the Jews and Muslims lay such curious stress. It was a result of my happening to spend a year in the East, at an age when the brain is very receptive of new ideas, and when I happen to be much impressed by the nobler aspects of Muslim civilization, especially I may say, with the manly conformity of the everyday practice to the creed which contrast sharply with what we see among most Europeans who profess extreme unworldiness and humiliation of one day of the week, enacting a worldly and masterful manner during the remaining six. Although many years have passed since that time I still find the old feelings in existence for instance, that of looking on the left hand is unclean. It is difficult to an untraveled Englishman who has not had an opportunity of throwing himself into the spirit of the East to credit the disgust and detestation that numerous everyday acts which appear perfectly harmless to his countrymen excite in many orientals to conclude the power of nature is very great in implanting sentiments of religious nature, of terror and of aversion, and in giving a felicious sense of there being natural instincts. But it will be observed that the circumstances from which these influences precede affect life classes simultaneously forming a kind of atmosphere which every member of them passes his life. They produce the cast of minds that distinguishes an Englishman from a foreigner and one class of Englishman from another. But they have little influence in creating the differences that exist between individuals of the same class. End of Chapter 28 End of Section 7 Section 8 of Enquiries into Human Faculty by Francis Galton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit thebrivox.org The Quarter by Leon Harvey Chapter 29 History of Twins The exceedingly close resemblance attributed to twins has been the subject of many novels and plays and most persons have held a desire to know upon what basis of truth those works of fiction may rest. But twins have a special claim upon our attention. It is that their history affords mays of distinguishing between the effects of the tendencies received at birth and those that were imposed by the special circumstances thereafter lives. The objection to statistical evidence in proof of the inheritance of peculiar faculties has always been the person's room you compare may have lived under similar social conditions and have had similar advantages of education, but such prominent conditions are only a small part of those that determine the future of each man's life. It is through trifling accidental circumstances that he has spent of his disposition and his success and the ease you leave wholly out of account. In fact, they do not admit of being tabulated and therefore your statistics. However plausible at first sight, I really have very little use. No method of inquiry which I have previously been able to carry out, and I have tried many methods, it is only free from this objection. I have therefore attacked the problem from the opposite side, seeking for some new method by which it would be possible to weigh in just scales of nature and nurture, and to ascertain their respective shares in framing the disposition and intellectual ability of men. The life history of twins applies what I wanted. We may begin by inquiring about twins who are closely alike in boy hoarding youth and who were educated together for many years and learned whether they subsequently grew unlike, and if so what the main causes were which in the opinion of the family produced the dissimilarity. In this way, we can obtain direct evidence of the kind we want. Again we may obtain yet more valuable evidence by a converse method. We can inquire into the history of twins who were exceedingly unlike in childhood and learn how far their characters became assimilated under the influence of identical nurture is as much as they had the same home, the same teachers, the same associates, and in every other respect the same surroundings. My materials were obtained by sending circulars of inquired to persons who were either twins themselves or their relations of twins. The printed questions were in 13 groups, thus the mask for the addresses of other twins known to the recipient who might be lucky to respond if I wrote to them. This happily led to a continually widening circle of correspondence which I pursued until enough material was accumulated for a general reconnaissance of the subject. There is a large literature relating to twins in their purely surgical and physiological aspect. The reader interested in their should consult Daileir von der Lingen von L. Kleinwatcher Prague 1871. It is full of references and it is also unhappily disfigured by a number of numerical misprints, especially in page 26. I have not found any book that treats the twins from my present point of view. The reader will easily understand that the word twins is a vague expression which covers two very dissimilar events the one corresponding to the progeny of animals that usually bear more than one at a birth, each of the progeny being derived from a separate ovum where the other event is due to the development of two general spots in the same ovum. In the later case they are enveloped in the same membrane and all such twins are found invariably to be of the same sex. The consequence of this is that I find a curious discontinuity in my results. One would have expected that twins would commonly be found to possess a certain average likeness to one another that if you would greatly exceed the average likeness, and if you would greatly foreshort of it. But this is not at all the case. Extreme similarity and extreme dissimilarity between twins in the same sex are nearly as common as moderate resemblance. When the twins are a boy and a girl, they are never closely alike. In fact, their origin is never due to the development of two general spots in the same ovum. I received about 80 returns of cases of close dissimilarity. 35 are which entered into many instructive details. In a few of these not a single point of difference could be specified. In the remainder the colour of the hair in the eyes were almost always identical. The height, weight and strength were nearly so. Nevertheless I have a few cases of a notable difference in height, weight and strength although the resemblance was otherwise very near. The manner and personal address of the 35 pairs of twins are usually described as very similar but accompanied by a slight difference of expression familiar to near relatives though unproceeded by strangers. The intonation of the voice when speaking is commonly the same but it frequently happens that the twins sing in different keys. Most singularly the one point at which similarity is rare is the handwriting. I cannot account for this considering how strongly handwriting runs in families but I'm sure of the fact. I have only one case in which nobody not even the twins themselves could distinguish their own notes of lectures etc. barely two or three of which the handwriting was undistinguishable by others and only a few in which it was described as closely alike. On the other hand, I have many in which it is stated to be unlike and some in which it is alluded to as the only point of difference. It would appear that the handwriting is a very delicate test of difference in organisation a conclusion which I commend to the notice of enthusiasts in the art of discovering character by the handwriting. One of my enquiries was for anecdotes regarding mistakes made between the twins by their near relatives. The replies are numerous but not very varied in character. When the twins are children, they are usually distinguished by ribbons tied around the wrist or neck. Nevertheless, the one is sometimes fed, physical and whipped by mistake for the other and the description of these little domestic catastrophes are usually given by the mother in a phraseology that is somewhat touching by reason of its seriousness. I have one case in which a doubt remains whether the children were not changed in their bath and the presumed A is not really B and vice versa. In another case, an artist was engaged on the portraits of twins who were between three and four years of age. He had to lay aside his work for three weeks and resuming it he could not tell to which child the respective likeness he had in hand belonged. Their mistakes become less numerous on the part of the mother during the boyhood and girlhood of the twins but are almost as frequent as before on the part of strangers. I have many instances of tutors being unable to distinguish their twin pupils. Two girls used regularly to impose pressure when one of them wanted the whole holiday. They had their lessons at separate hours and the other girl sacrificed herself to receive two lessons on the same day while the other one enjoyed herself for more new evening. Here is a brief and comprehensive account. Exactly alike in all, their school masters never could tell them apart. At dancing parties they constantly changed partners without discovery. Their close resemblance is scarcely diminished by age. The following is a typical schoolboy anecdote. Two twins were fond of playing tricks and complaints were frequently made but the boys would never own which one was the guilty one and the complaints were never certain which of the two he was. The headmaster used to say he would never flog the innocent for the guilty and another used to flog both. No doubt the nine anecdotes have reached me of a twin seeing his or her reflection in a looking glass and dressing it in the belief that it was the other twin in person. I have many anecdotes of mistakes when the twins were nearly grown up thus. Assuming scenes occurred at college when one twin came to visit the other the boarder on one occasion refused him to let the visitor out of the college gates for though they stood side by side he professed ignorance as to which he ought to allow to depart. Children are usually quick in distinguishing between their parent and his or her twin but I have two cases to the contrary. Thus the daughter of a twin says such was the marvellous similarity of their features, voice, manner etc. but I remember as a child being very much puzzled and I think that my aunt lived much with us. I should have ended by thinking I had two mothers. In another case a father who was a twin remarks himself and his brother we were extremely alike and so at this moment so much that children up to five and six did not know us apart. I have four or five instances of doubt during an engagement of marriage thus I married first but both twins met the lady together for the first time and fell in love with her there and then they managed to see her home and to gain her affection though B went sometimes courting in his place and neither the lady nor her parents could tell which was which. I have also a German letter written in quite terms about twin brothers who married sisters but could not easily be distinguished by them. In the well-known novel by Mr. Wilkie Collins of Poor Miss Finch the blind girl distinguishes the twin she loves by the touch of his hand which gives her a thrill that the touch of her other brother does not. Philosophers have not I believe as yet investigated the conditions of such thrills but I have a case in which Miss Finch's test would have failed. Two persons both friends of a certain twin lady told me that she had frequently remarked to them that kissing her twin sister was not like kissing her other sisters but like kissing herself her own hand for example. It would be an interesting experiment for twins who were closely alike to try how far dogs could distinguish them by scent. I have a few anecdotes of strange mistakes made between twins in adult life. Thus an officer writes on one occasion when I returned from foreign service my father turned to me and said I thought you were in London thinking I was my brother yet he had not seen me for nearly four years. Our resemblance was so great. The next and last anecdote I shall give is perhaps the most remarkable of those I have. It was sent to me by the brother of the twins who were in middle life at the time of its occurrence. I was again coming home from India on leave and shipped on arrival 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 in the same sex. And then although the resemblance usually diminishes as they grow into manhood and womanhood, some cases occur in which the diminution of resemblance is highly 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 a gout. To this I shall recur. There's 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 seem 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 there seem to have marked us throughout 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 the 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 the views which we then took of matters in which we were interested. In explanation of this apparent interchangeableness we must recollect that no character is simple and that in twins who strongly resemble each other every expression in the one may be matched by a corresponding expression in the other but it does not follow that the same expression should be the prevalent one in both cases. Now it is by their prevalent expressions that we should distinguish between the twins consequently when one twin is temporarily the expression which is the prevalent one in his brother he is apt to be mistaken for him. There are also cases where the development of the two twins is not strictly parry-passeau they reach the same goal at the same time but not by identical stages thus A is born the larger then B overtakes and surpasses A and in his turn overtaken by A. The end being that the twins on reaching adult life are of the same size. This process would aid in giving an interchangeable likeness at certain periods of their growth as undoubtedly due to nature more frequently than to nurture. Among my 35 detailed cases of close similarity there are no lessons said in which both twins suffered from some special ailment or had some exceptional peculiarity. One twin writes that she and her sister have both the defect not been able to come downstairs quickly which however was not born with them but came on the age of 20. Three birds of twins have peculiarities in their fingers in one case it consists in a slight congenation flexure of one of the joints of the little finger it was inherited from a grandmother but neither parents nor brothers nor sisters show the least trace of it. In another case the twins have a peculiar way of bending the fingers and there was a faint tendency to the same peculiarity in the mother but in her alone of all the family. In a third case about which I made a few inquiries which is given by Mr Darwin but is not included in my returns there was no known family tendency to the peculiarity which was observed in the twins of having a crooked little finger In another pair of twins one was born ruptured and the other became so at six months old two twins at the age of 23 were attacked by a toothache and the same tooth had to be extracted in each case there are curious and close correspondences mentioned in the falling off of the hair two cases are mentioned of death from the same disease one of which is very affecting one of the story was that the twins were closely alike and singularly attached and had identical tastes they both obtained government clerkships and kept house together when one sickened and died of Breitz disease and the other also sickened the same disease and died seven months later both twins were apt to sicken at the same time in at least nine out of 35 cases even their illnesses to which I refer were non-contagious or if contagious the twins caught them simultaneously they did not catch them the one from the other this implies so intimate a constitutional resemblance that it is proper to give some quotations and evidence thus the father of two twins says their general health is closely alike whenever one of them has an illness the other invariably has the same within a day or two and they usually recover in the same order such as being a case with whooping cough chicken pox and measles also with slight bilious attacks which they have successively laterally they had a feverish attack at the same time another parent of twins says if anything ales one of them identical symptoms nearly always appear in the other this has been singularly visible in two instances during the last two months thus when in London one fell ill with a violent attack of dysentery and within 24 hours the other had precisely the same symptoms a medical man writes of twins with whom he is well acquainted Wilstein knew them for a period of two years there was not the slightest tendency towards a difference in body or mind so the same powerless to produce any dissimilarity the mother of two other twins after describing how they were ill simultaneously up to the age of 15 adds that they shared their first milk teeth within a few hours of each other Tracelle has a remarkable case in the chapter on asthma his important work, Clinique Medicarelle in the edition of 1873 is in volume 2 page 473 it was quoted at length in the original French in Mr Darwin's variation on domestication volume 2 page 252 the following is a translation I attended twin brothers so extraordinarily alike that it was impossible for me to tell which was which without seeing them side by side but their physical likeness extended still deeper so to speak a yet more remarkable pathological thus one of them in my soul at the neotherms at Paris suffered from rheumatic ophthalmia said to me at this instant my brother must be having a failure like mine and as I had exclaimed against such an assertion he showed me a few days afterwards that I'd just recede by him from his brother who was at that time at Vienna and who expressed himself in these words I have my ophthalmia you must be having yours however singular this story may appear the fact is none less exact it has not been told to me by others but I've seen it myself and I've seen other and naggledest cases in my practice these twins were also asthmatic and asthmatic to a frightful degree they were born in my cells they were never able to stay in that town where their business affairs required them to go without having an attack still more strange it was sufficient for them to get away only as far as too long in order to be cured of the attack caught in my cells they travelled continually and in all countries on business affairs and they remarked that certain localities were extremely hurtful to them and that in others they were free from all asthmatic symptoms I do not like to pass over here the asthmatic tale in the psychology morbid of Dr. J. Moro detours medicine D. hospice D. Bacetre Paris, 1859 page 172 he speaks of two twin brothers who have been confined on account of monomania Bacetre physically the two young men are so nearly alike that the one is easily mistaken for the other morally their resemblance is no less complete and it's most remarkable in its details thus the dominant ideas are absolutely the same they both consider themselves subject to imaginary persecutions the same enemies have sworn their destruction and employed the same means to effect it both have hallucinations of hearing they are both in melancholy and morose they never address a word to anybody and will hardly answer the questions that others address to them they always keep apart and never communicate with one another an extremely curious fact which has been frequently noted by the superintendents of their section of the hospital and by myself is this from time to time at very irregular intervals of two, three or many months without appreciable cause and by the purely spontaneous effect of their illness a very marked change is taking place in the condition of the two brothers both of them at the same time and often on the same day arouse themselves from their habitual stupor and prostration they make the same complaints and they come of their own accord to the physician with an urgent request to be liberated I have seen a strange thing occurring they were some miles apart the one being by Citrid and the other living in Centaine I sent a copy of this passage to the principal authorities among the physicians to the insane in England asking if they had ever witnessed a similar case in reply I have received three noteworthy instances by none to be coin paired to their exact parallelism with that just given the details of the three cases are painful and it is not necessary to my general purpose that I should further allude to them there is another curious French case of insanity in twins which was pointed out to me by Sir James Paget described by Dr Bourne in the Annales Medical Physiologics for Siri, Volume 1 1863 page 312 which the following is an abstract the original contains a few more details but is too long to quote François and Martin 50 years of age worked as railroad contractors between Quimper and Châtelin Martin had twice slight attacks of insanity on January 15 a box was robbed in which the twins had deposited their savings on the night of January 23, 24 both François who lodged at Quimper and Martin who lived with his wife and children at Saint Laurette two leagues from Quimper had the same dream at the same hour 3am and both awoke with a violent start calling out I have caught the thief they are doing mischief to my brother they were both of them extremely agitated and gave way to similar extravagances dancing and leaping Martin sprang on his grandchild declaring that he was a 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 to some excuse and tried to drown himself in the river Steeo who was forcibly stopped by a son who had watched and followed him he was then taken to an asylum by gendarmes where he died in three hours François on his part calmed down on the morning of the 24th and employed the day in inquiring about the robbery by 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 Steeo which he actually did at the very spot where Martin attempted to do the same thing a few hours previously the next point I shall mention in the illustration of the extremely close resemblance between certain twins is a similarity in the association of their ideas no less than 11 out of the 35 cases testified to this they make the same remarks on the same occasion begin singing the same song at the same moment in someone or one would commence a sentence and the other would finish it an observant friend geographically described to me the effect produced on her by two such twins whom she had met casually she said that 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 the 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 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 taste and dispositions of the 35 pervs of twins in 16 cases that is in nearly one half of them these were described as closely similar in the remaining 19 they were much alike by subject to certain named differences these differences belonged almost wholly to such groups of quality disease the one was the more vigorous, fearless, energetic the other was gentile, clinging, timid or the one was more ardent and the other more calm and placid or again the one was the more independent original and self-contained the other more generous, hasty and vivacious in short the difference was that of intensity or energy in one or other of its protein forms did not extend more deeply into the structure of the characters the more vivacious might be subdued by ill health until you assume the character of the other or the latter might be raised by excellent health did that of the former the difference was in the keynote not in the melody it follows from what has been said concerning the similar dispositions of the twins the similarity in the association 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 of a strong bodily resemblance been 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 and that it would be incorrect to conclude from what has just been said about the twins that mental and bodily likeness are invariably co-coordinate such being by no means the case we are now on a position to understand that the phrase close similarity is no exaggeration and to realise the value of the evidence I am about to adduce there are 35 cases of twins who were closely alike in body and mind when they were young and who have been reared exactly alike up to their early manhood and womanhood since then the conditions of their lives have changed what change of nurture has produced the most variation it was with no little interest that I searched the records of 35 cases for the answer and they gave an answer that was altogether direct but it was distinct and not at all what I had expected they showed me that in some cases the resemblance of body and mind had continued unaltered up to old age not with standing very different conditions of life and they showed in the other cases that the parents ascribe such dissimilarity as there was holy or almost holy to some form of illness in four cases it was scarlet fever in a fifth typhus in a sixth a slight effect derived to a nervous fever in a seventh it was the effect of an Indian climate in the eighth an illness unnamed of nine month duration in a ninth varicose veins in a tenth a bad fracture of the leg which prevented all active exercise afterwards and there were three additional instances of undefined forms of ill health it will be sufficient to quote one of the returns in this the father writes at birth they were exactly alike the effect of bad varicose affection the effect of which had been to prevent any violent exercise such as dancing or running and as she has grown older to make her more serious and thoughtful had it not been for this infirmity I think the two would have been as exactly alike as it is possible for two women to be both mentally and physically even now they are constantly mistaken for one another in only a very few cases is some illusion made to the dissimilarity being partially due to the combined action of many small influences and in none of the 35 cases is it largely much less wholly ascribed to that case in a single instance have I met with a word about the growing dissimilarity being due to the action of the firm free will of one above the twins which are triumph over natural tendencies and yet a large proportion of my correspondence happened to be clergymen who is bent of mind as opposed as I feel assured from the turn of their letters to a necessary in view of life it has been remarked that a growing diversity between twins may be ascribed to the tired development of naturally diverse qualities but we have a right upon the evidence I have received to go further than this we have seen that a few twins retain their close resemblance throughout life in other words instances do exist of an apparently thorough similarity of nature in which such differences of external circumstances as may be consistent with the ordinary conditions of the same social rank in country do not create dissimilarity positive evidence such as this cannot be outweighed by any amount of negative evidence therefore in those cases where there is a growing diversity and where no external cause can be assigned either by the twins themselves or by the family for it as we may feel assured that it must be chiefly altogether due to a want authority dissimilarity in their nature nay, further in some cases is distinctly affirmed that the growing dissimilarity can be accounted for in no other way we may therefore broadly conclude that the only circumstance within the range of those by which persons of similar conditions of life are affected that is capable of producing a marked effect on the character of adults is illness or some accident which causes physical infirmity the twins who closely resembled each other in childhood and early youth and were reared under not very dissimilar conditions either grow unlike through the development of natural characteristics which had lain dormant at first whilst they continued their lives keeping time like two watches hardly to be thrown out of accord except by some physical jar nature is far stronger than nature within limited range that I've been careful to assign to the latter the effect of illness as shown by these replies is great and well deserves further consideration it appears that the constitution of youth is not so elastic as we are apt to think but that an attack, say of Scarlet Fever lays a permanent mark easily to be measured by the present method of comparison this recalls an impression made strongly on my mind several years ago by the sight of some curves drawn by a mathematical friend he took monthly measurements of the circumference of his children's heads during the first few years of their lives and he laid down the successive measurements on the successive lines of a piece of ruled paper by taking the edge of the paper as a base he then joined the free ends of the lines and so obtained a curve of growth the curves had on the whole that regularity of sweep there might have been expected each of them showed occasional halts like the landing places on a long flight of stairs the development had been arrested by something and was not made up for by after growth now in the same piece of paper my friend had also registered the various infantile illnesses of the children and corresponding to each illness was one of these halts there may no doubt in my mind that if these illnesses had been warded off the development of the children would have been increased by almost a precise amount lost in these halts in other words the disease had drawn largely upon the capital and not only on the income of their constitutions I hope these remarks may induce some men of science to repeat similar experiments on their children of the future they may compress to use of a child's history on one side of a ruled half sheet of fullscape paper if they cause each successive line to stand for a successive month beginning from the birth of the child and if they economize space by laying not the zero inch division of the tape pages but say the ten inch division the steady and pitiless march of the hidden weaknesses in our constitutions through illness and death is painfully revealed by these histories of twins we are too apt to look upon the illness and death as capricious events and there are some who ascribe them to the direct effect of supernatural interference whereas the fact the maladies of two twins being continually like shows that illness and death are necessary incidents in a regular sequence of constitutional changes beginning at birth and upon the external circumstances have on the whole very small effect in cases where the maladies of the twins are continually alike the clocks of their two lives move regularly on at the same rate governed by their internal mechanism when the hands approach the hour there are sudden clicks followed by a whirring of wheels the moment they touch it the strokes fall and that necessitarians may drive new arguments from their life histories of twins we will now consider the converse side of our subject which appears to me even the more important of the two ith row we have investigated cases where the similarity at first was close but afterwards became less now we will examine those in which there was great dissimilarity at first and we'll see how far an identity of nurturing childhood youth tended to assimilate them as has been already mentioned there is a large proportion of cases of sharply contrasted characteristics both of body and mind among twins I have 20 such cases given in much detail is the fact that extreme dissimilarity such as existed between Esau and Jacob is a no less marked peculiarity in twins of the same sex than extreme similarity on the curious point and or not much also in the history of twins I have many remarks to make but this is not the place to make them the evidence given by the 20 cases above mentioned is absolutely accordant so that the character the whole may be exactly conveyed by a few questions one one parent says they have had exactly the same nurture from their birth up to the present time they are both perfectly healthy and strong yet they are otherwise as dissimilar as two boys could be physically mentally and in their emotional nature two I can answer most decidedly that the twins have been perfectly dissimilar in character habits and likeness from the moment of their birth to the present time though they were noticed by the same woman went to school together and were never separated till the age of 15 three they have never been separated never the least differently treated in food clothing or education both teeth at the same time both had measles whooping cough and scarlet Tina at the same time and neither had had any other serious illness both are and have been exceedingly healthy and have good abilities yet they differ as much from each other in mental cast as any one of my family differs from another four very dissimilar body and mind the one is quiet, retiring and slow but sure good tempered but disposed to be sulky when provoked the others quick, vivacious forward arguing easily and forgetting soon quick tempered and choleric but quickly forgiving and forgetting they have been educated together and never separated five they were never like either in body or mind and the dissimilarity increases daily the external influences have been identical they have never been separated six the two sisters are very different in ability and disposition the one is retiring but firm and determined she has no taste for musical drawing the other is of an active excitable temperament she displays an unusual amount of quickness and talent has passionately fond of music and drawing from infancy they have been rarely separated even at school and as children visiting their friends they always went together seven they have been treated exactly both were brought up by hand they have been of the same nurse and governess from their birth and they are very fond of each other their increasing dissimilarity must be ascribed to a natural difference of mind and character as there has been nothing in their treatment to account for it eight they are as different as possible a minute non sparing analysis of the characters the two twins is given by their father most instructive to read but impossible to publish without the certainty of wounded the feelings of the twins if these pages should chance to fall under his eyes they were brought up entirely by hand that is on cow's milk and treated by one nurse in precisely the same manner nine the home training and influence were precisely the same and therefore I consider the dissimilarity to be accounted for almost entirely by innate disposition and by causes of which we have no control ten the case is I should think somewhat remarkable for dissimilarity and physique as well as for strong contrast in character they have been unlike in body and mind throughout their lives both were reared in a country house and both were the same school till estimate sixteen eleven singularly unlike in body and mind from babyhood in looks, disposition and tastes they are in looks, dispositions and tastes they are quite different I think I may say the dissimilarity was innate and developed more by time and circumstance twelve we were never in the least degree alike I should say my sisters and my own character diametrically opposed and have been utterly different from our birth there are very strong affections subsist between us thirteen the father remarks they were curiously different in body and mind from birth the surviving twin the senior wrangler of Cambridge has effect struck all our school contemporaries that my brother and I were complementary so to speak in point of ability and disposition he was contemplative, political and literary to a remarkable degree showing great power in that line I was practical mathematical and linguistic between us we should have made a very decent sort of man I could quote others just as strong as these and some of which the above phrase complementary also appears while I have not a single case in which my correspondence speak of originally dissimilar characters having become assimilated through identity of nurture however a somewhat exaggerated estimate of dissimilarity may be due to the tendency of relatives to dwell unconsciously on distinctive peculiarities and to disregard the far more numerous points of likeness they would first attract the notice of a stranger thus in case eleven I find the remark strangers see a strong likeness between them but none who knows them well can perceive it instances are common of slight acquaintances make mistaking members and especially daughters of a family for one another between whom intimate friends can barely discover resemblance still making reasonable allowance for unintentional exaggeration the impression that all this evidence leaves on the mind is one of the same wonder whether nurture can do anything at all beyond giving instruction in professional training it emphatically corroborates and goes far beyond the conclusions to which we had already been driven by the cases of similarity in those the causes of divergence became too active about the period of adult life when their characters have become somewhat fixed but here the causes conductive to assimilation begin to act from the earliest moment of the existence of the twins when the disposition was most pliant and they were continuous until the period of adult life there is no escape from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture when the differences of nurture do not exceed what is commonly to be found among persons of the same rank of society and in the same country my fear is that my evidence may seem to prove too much and be discredited on that account as it appears contrary to all experience that nurture should go for so little but experience is often fallacious in ascribing great effects to trifling circumstances many a person has amused himself with throwing bits of stick into a tiny book and watching the progress how they are arrested first by one chance obstacle then by another and again how their onward course is facilitated by a combination of circumstances he might ascribe much importance to each of these events and think how largely the destiny of the stick had been governed by a series of trifling accidents nevertheless all the sticks succeed in passing down the current and the long run they travel at nearly the same rate so it is with life in respect to several accidents which seem to have had a great effect upon our careers the one element that varies in different individuals but it's constant in each of them is a natural tendency it corresponds to the current in the stream and inevitably asserts itself much stress is laid on the persistence of moral impressions made in childhood and the conclusion is drawn that the effects of early teaching must be important in a corresponding degree I acknowledge the fact so far as has been explained in the chapter on early sentiments but there is a considerable set off on the other side those teachings are conformed by the natural aptitudes that the child leave much more enduring marks in others now both the teachings and the natural aptitudes that the child are usually derived from its parents they are able to understand the ways of one another more intimately than is possible to persons not of the same blood and the child instinctively assimilates the habits and ways of thought of its parents his disposition is educated by them in the true sense of the world it is to say it is a vote not formed by them these grounds are ascribed with the persistence of many habits that date from early home education to the peculiarities of the instructors rather than to the period when the instruction was given the marks left on the memory by the instructions of a foster mother are soon sponged clean away consider the history of the cuckoo which is reared exclusively by foster mothers it is probable that nearly every young cuckoo doing a series of many hundred generations has been brought up in a family whose language is a joke and a twitter but the cuckoo cannot or will not adopt that language or any other of the habits of its foster parents it leads its birthplace as soon as is able and finds out its own kith and kin and identifies itself henceforth with them so utterly are the earliest instructions in an alien bird language neglected and so completely is its new education successful that the note of the cuckoo tribe is singularly correct end of chapter 29 end of section 8