Chapter II: Part 2

So much with respect to the rich and varied scientific interest attaching to the movements of the child's mind. It only remains to touch on a third main interest in childhood, the practical or educational interest. The modern world, while erecting the child into an object of æsthetic contemplation, while bringing to bear on him the bull's eye lamp of scientific observation, has become sorely troubled by the momentous problem of rearing him. What was once a matter of instinct and unthinking rule-of-thumb has become the subject of profound and perplexing discussion. Mothers--the right sort of mothers that is--feel that they must know to the core this wee speechless creature which they are called upon to direct into the safe road to manhood. And professional teachers, more particularly the beginners in the work of training, whose work is in some respects the most difficult and the most honourable, have come to see that a clear insight into child-nature and its spontaneous movements must precede any intelligent attempt to work beneficially upon this nature. In this way the teacher has lent his support to the savant and the psychologist in their investigation of infancy. More particularly he has betaken him to the psychologist in order to discover more of the native tendencies and the governing laws of that unformed child-mind which it is his in a special manner to form. In addition to this, the growing educational interest in the spontaneous behaviour of the child's mind may be expected to issue in a demand for a _statistic_ of childhood, that is to say, carefully arranged collections of observations bearing on such points as children's questions, their first thoughts about nature, their manifestations of sensibility and insensibility.

The awakening in the modern mind of this keen and varied interest in childhood has led, and is destined to lead still more, to the observation of infantile ways. This observation will, of course, be of very different value according as it subserves the contemplation of the humorous or other æsthetically valuable aspect of child-nature, or as it is directed towards a scientific understanding of this. Pretty anecdotes of children which tickle the emotions may or may not add to our insight into the peculiar mechanism of children's minds. There is no necessary connection between smiling at infantile drolleries and understanding the laws of infantile intelligence. Indeed, the mood of merriment, if too exuberant, will pretty certainly swamp for the moment any desire to understand.

The observation which is to further understanding, which is to be acceptable to science, must itself be scientific. That is to say, it must be at once guided by foreknowledge, specially directed to what is essential in a phenomenon and its surroundings or conditions, and perfectly exact. If anybody supposes this to be easy, he should first try his hand at the work, and then compare what he has seen with what Darwin or Preyer has been able to discover.

How difficult this is may be seen even with reference to the outward physical part of the phenomena to be observed. Ask any mother untrained in observation to note the first appearance of that complex facial movement which we call a smile, and you know what kind of result you are likely to get. The phenomena of a child's mental life, even on its physical and visible side, are of so subtle and fugitive a character that only a fine and quick observation is able to cope with them. But observation of children is never merely seeing. Even the smile has to be interpreted as a smile by a process of imaginative inference. Many careless onlookers would say that a baby smiles in the first days from very happiness, when another and simpler explanation of the movement is forthcoming. Similarly, it wants much fine judgment to say whether an infant is merely stumbling accidentally on an articulate sound, or is imitating your sound. A glance at some of the best memoirs will show how enormously difficult it is to be sure of a right interpretation of these early and comparatively simple manifestations of mind.

Things grow a great deal worse when we try to throw our scientific lasso about the elusive spirit of a child of four or six, and to catch the exact meaning of its swiftly changing movements. Children are, no doubt, at this age frank before the eye of love, and their minds are vastly more accessible than that of the dumb dog that can only look his ardent thoughts. Yet they are by no means so open to view as is often supposed. All kinds of shy reticences hamper them: they feel unskilled in using our cumbrous language; they soon find out that their thoughts are not as ours, but often make us laugh. And how carefully are they wont to hide from our sight their nameless terrors, physical and moral. Much of the deeper childish experience can only reach us, if at all, years after it is over, through the faulty medium of adult memory--faulty even when it is the memory of a Goethe, a George Sand, a Robert Louis Stevenson.

Even when there is perfect candour, and the little one does his best to instruct us as to what is passing in his mind by his "whys" and his "I 'sposes," accompanied by the most eloquent of looks, we find ourselves ever and again unequal to comprehending. Child-thought follows its own paths--roads, as Mr. Rudyard Kipling has well said, "unknown to those who have left childhood behind." The dark sayings of childhood, as when child asks, "Why am I not somebody else?" will be fully illustrated below.

This being so, it might well seem arrogant to speak of any "scientific" investigation of the child's mind; and, to be candid, I may as well confess that, in spite of some recently published highly hopeful forecasts of what child-psychology is going to do for us, I think we are a long way off from a perfectly scientific account of it. Our so-called theories of children's mental activity have so often been hasty generalizations from imperfect observation. Children are probably much more diverse in their ways of thinking and feeling than our theories suppose. But of this more presently. Even where we meet with a common and comparatively prominent trait, we are far as yet from having a perfect comprehension of it. I at least believe that children's play, about which so much has confidently been written, is but imperfectly understood. Is it serious business, half-conscious make-believe, more than half-conscious acting, or, no one of these, or all of them by turns? I think he would be a bold man who ventured to answer this question straight away.

In this state of things it might seem well to wait. Possibly by-and-by we shall light on new methods of tapping the childish consciousness. Patients in a certain stage of the hypnotic trance have returned, it is said, to their childish experience and feelings. Some people do this, or appear to do this, in their dreams. I know a young man who revives vivid recollections of the experiences of the third year of life when he is sleepy, and more especially if he is suffering from a cold. These facts suggest that if we only knew more about the mode of working of the brain we might reinstate a special group of conditions which would secure a re-emergence of childish ideas and sentiments.

Yet our case is not so hopeless that we need defer inquiry into the child's mind until human science has fathomed all the mysteries of the brain. We can know many things of this mind, and these of great importance, even now. The naturalist discusses the actions of the lower animals, confidently attributing intelligent planning here and a germ of vanity or even of moral sense there; and it would be hard were we forbidden to study the little people that are of our own race, and are a thousand times more open to inspection. Really good work has already been done here, and one should be grateful. At the same time, it seems to me of the greatest importance to recognize that it is but a beginning: that the child which the modern world has in the main discovered is after all only half discovered: that if we are to get at his inner life, his playful conceits, his solemn broodings over the mysteries of things, his way of responding to the motley show of life, we must carry this work of noting and interpreting to a much higher point.

Now, if progress is to be made in this work, we must have specially qualified workers. All who know anything of the gross misunderstandings of children of which many so-called intelligent adults are capable, will bear me out when I say that a certain gift of penetration is absolutely indispensable here. If any one asks me what the qualifications of a good child-observer amount to, I may perhaps answer, for the sake of brevity, "A divining faculty, the offspring of child-love, perfected by scientific training." Let us see what this includes.

That the observer of children must be a diviner, a sort of clairvoyant reader of their secret thoughts, seems to me perfectly obvious. Watch half a dozen men who find themselves unexpectedly ushered into a room tenanted by a small child, and you will soon be able to distinguish the diviners, who, just because they have in themselves something akin to the child, seem able at once to get into touch with children. It is probable that women's acknowledged superiority in knowledge of child-nature is owing to their higher gift of sympathetic insight. This faculty, so far from being purely intellectual, is very largely the outgrowth of a peculiar moral nature to which the life of all small things, and of children more than all, is always sweet and congenial. It is very much of a secondary, or acquired instinct; that is, an unreflecting intuition which is the outgrowth of a large experience. For the child-lover seeks the object of his love, and is never so happy as when associating with children and sharing in their thoughts and their pleasures. And it is through such habitual intercourse that there forms itself the instinct or tact by which the significance of childish manifestation is at once unerringly discerned.

There is in this tact or fineness of spiritual touch one constituent so important as to deserve special mention. I mean a lively memory of one's own childhood. As I have observed above, I do not believe in an exact and trustworthy reproduction in later life of particular incidents of childhood. All recalling of past experiences illustrates the modifying influence of the later self in its attempt to assimilate and understand the past self; and this transforming effect is at its maximum when we try to get back to childhood. But though our memory of childhood is not in itself exact enough to furnish facts, it may be sufficiently strong for the purposes of interpreting our observations of the children we see about us. It is said, and said rightly, that in order to read a child's mind we need imagination, and since all imagination is merely readjustment of individual experience, it follows that the skilled decipherer of infantile characters needs before all things to be in touch with his own early feelings and thoughts. And this is just what we find. The vivacious, genial woman who is never so much at home as when surrounded by a bevy of eager-minded children is a woman who remains young in the important sense that she retains much of the freshness and unconventionality of mind, much of the gaiety and expansiveness of early life. Conversely one may feel pretty sure that a woman who retains a vivid memory of her childish ideas and feelings will be drawn to the companionship of children. After reading their autobiographies one hardly needs to be told that Goethe carried into old age his quick responsiveness to the gaiety of the young heart; and that George Sand when grown old was never so happy as when gathering the youngsters about her.

Yet valuable as is this gift of sympathetic insight, it will not, of course, conduce to that methodical, exact kind of observation which is required by science. Hence the need of the second qualification: psychological training. By this is meant that special knowledge which comes from studying the principles of the science, its peculiar problems, and the methods appropriate to these, together with the special skill which is attained by a methodical, practical application of this knowledge in the actual observation and interpretation of manifestations of mind. Thus a woman who wishes to observe to good effect the mind of a child of three must have a sufficient acquaintance with the general course of the mental life to know what to expect, and in what way the phenomena observed have to be interpreted. Really fine and fruitful observation is the outcome of a large knowledge, and anybody who is to carry out in a scientific fashion the observation of the humblest phase of a child's mental life must already know this life as a whole, so far as psychology can as yet describe its characteristics, and determine the conditions of its activity.

And here the question naturally arises: "Who is to carry out this new line of scientific observation?" To begin with the first stage of it, who is to carry out the exact methodical record of the movements of the infant? It is evident that qualification or capacity is not all that is necessary here; capacity must be favoured with opportunity before the work can be actually begun.

It has been pointed out that the pioneers who struck out this new line of experimental research were medical men. The meaning of this fact is pretty apparent. The doctor has not only a turn for scientific observation: he is a privileged person in the nursery. The natural guardians of infancy, the mother and the nurse, exempt him from their general ban on the male. He excepted, no man, not even the child's own father, is allowed to meddle too much with that divine mystery, that meeting point of all the graces and all the beatitudes, the infant.

Consider for a moment the natural prejudice which the inquirer into the characteristics of the infant has to face. Such inquiry is not merely passively watching what spontaneously presents itself; it is emphatically experimenting, that is, the calling out of reactions by applying appropriate stimuli. Even to try whether the new-born babe will close its fingers on your finger when brought into contact with their anterior surface may well seem impious to a properly constituted nurse. To propose to test the wee creature's sense of taste by applying drops of various solutions, as acid, bitters, etc., to the tongue, or to provoke ocular movements to the right or the left, would pretty certainly seem a profanation of the temple of infancy, if not fraught with danger to its tiny deity. And as to trying Dr. Robinson's experiment of getting the newly arrived visitor to suspend his whole precious weight by clasping a bar, it is pretty certain that, women being constituted as at present, only a medical man could have dreamt of so daring a feat.

There is no doubt that baby-worship, the sentimental adoration of infant ways, is highly inimical to the carrying out of a perfectly cool and impartial process of scientific observation. Hence the average mother can hardly be expected to do more than barely to tolerate this encroaching of experiment into the hallowed retreat of the nursery. Even in these days of rapid modification of what used to be thought unalterable sexual characters, one may be bold enough to hazard the prophecy that women who have had scientific training will, if they happen to become mothers, hardly be disposed to give their minds at the very outset to the rather complex and difficult work, say, of making an accurate scientific inventory of the several modes of infantile sensibility, visual, auditory, and so forth, and of the alterations in these from day to day.

It is for the coarser fibred man, then, to undertake much of the earlier experimental work in the investigation of child-nature. And if fathers will duly qualify themselves they will probably find that permission will little by little be given them to carry out investigations, short, of course, of anything that looks distinctly dangerous to the little being's comfort.

At the same time it is evident that a complete series of observations of the infant can hardly be carried out by a man alone. It is for the mother, or some other woman with a pass-key to the nursery, with her frequent and prolonged opportunities of observation to attempt a careful and methodical register of mental progress. Hence the importance of enlisting the mother or her female representative as collaborateur or at least as assistant. Thus supposing the father is bent on ascertaining the exact dates and the order of appearance of the different articulate sounds, which is rather a subject of passive observation than of active experiment; he will be almost compelled to call in the aid of one who has the considerable advantage of passing a good part of each day near the child.[1]

As the wee thing grows and its nervous system becomes more stable and robust more in the way of research may of course be safely attempted. In this higher stage the work of observation will be less simple and involve more of special psychological knowledge. It is a comparatively easy thing to say whether the sudden approach of an object to the eye of a baby a week or so old calls forth the reflex known as blinking: it is a much more difficult thing to say what are the preferences of a child of twelve months in the matter of simple forms, or even colours.

The problem of the order of development of the colour-sense in children looks at first easy enough. Any mother, it may be thought, can say which colours the child first recognizes by naming them when seen, or picking them out when another names them. Yet simple as it looks, the problem is in reality anything but simple. A German investigator, Professor Preyer of Berlin, went to work methodically with his little boy of two years in order to see in what order he would discriminate colours. Two colours, red and green, were first shown, the name added to each, and the child then asked: "Which is red?" "Which is green?" Then other colours were added and the experiments repeated. According to these researches this particular child first acquired a clear discriminative awareness of yellow. Preyer's results have not, however, been confirmed by other investigators, as M. Binet, of Paris, who followed a similar method of inquiry. Thus according to Binet it is not yellow but blue which carries the day in the competition for the child's preferential recognition.

What, it may be asked, is the explanation of this? Is it that children differ in the mode of development of their colour-sensibility to this extent, or can it be that there is some fault in the method of investigation? It has been recently suggested that the mode of testing colour-discrimination by naming is open to the objection that a child may get hold of one verbal sound as "red" more easily than another as "green" and that this would facilitate the recognition of the former. If in this way the recognition of a colour is aided by the retention of its name, we must get rid of this disturbing element of sound. Accordingly new methods of experiment have been attempted in France and America. Thus Professor Baldwin investigates the matter by placing two colours opposite the child's two arms and noting which is reached out to by right or left arm, which is ignored. He has tabulated the results of a short series of these simple experiments for testing childish preference, and supports the conclusions of Binet, as against those of Preyer, that blue comes in for the first place in the child's discriminative recognition.[2] It is, however, easy to see that this method has its own characteristic defects. Thus, to begin with, it evidently does not directly test colour-discrimination at all, but the liking for or interest in colours, which though it undoubtedly implies a measure of discrimination must not be confused with this. And even as a test of preference it is very likely to be misapplied. Thus supposing that the two colours are not equally bright, then the child will grasp at one rather than at the other, because it is a brighter object and not because it is this particular colour. Again if one colour falls more into the first and fresh period of the exercise when the child is fresh and active, whereas another falls more into the second period when he is tired and inactive, the results would, it is evident, give too much value to the former. Similarly, if one colour were brought in after longer intervals of time than another it would have more attractive force through its greater novelty.

Enough has been said to show how very delicate a problem we have here to deal with. And if scientific men are still busy settling the point how the problem can be best dealt with, it seems hopeless for the amateur to dabble in the matter.

I have purposely chosen a problem of peculiar complexity and delicacy in order to illustrate the importance of that training which makes the mental eye of the observer quick to analyse the phenomenon to be dealt with so as to take in all its conditions. Yet there are many parts of this work of observing the child's mind which do not make so heavy a demand on technical ability, but can be done by any intelligent observer prepared for the task by a reasonable amount of psychological study. I refer more particularly to that rich and highly interesting field of exploration which opens up when the child begins to talk. It is in the spontaneous utterances of children, their first quaint uses of words, that we can best watch the play of the instinctive tendencies of thought. Children's talk is always valuable to a psychologist; and for my part I would be glad of as many anecdotal records of their sayings as I could collect.

Here, then, there seems to be room for a relatively simple and unskilled kind of observing work. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that even this branch of child-observation requires nothing but ordinary intelligence. To begin with, we are all prone, till by special training we have learned to check the inclination, to read far too much of our older thought and sentiment into children. As M. Drox observes, "we are the dupes of ourselves when we observe the babe."

Again, there is a subtle source of error connected with the very attitude of undergoing examination which only a carefully trained observer of childish ways will avoid. A child is very quick in spying whether he is being observed, and as soon as he suspects that you are specially interested in his talk he is apt to try to produce an effect. This wish to say something startling, wonderful, or what not, will, it is obvious, detract from the value of the utterance.

But once more the saying which it is so easy to report has had its history, and the observer who knows something of psychology will look out for facts, that is to say, experiences of the child, suggestions made by others' words which throw light on the saying. No fact is really quite simple, and the reason why some facts look so simple is that the observer does not include in his view all the connections of the occurrence which he is inspecting. The unskilled observer of children is apt to send scraps, fragments of facts, which have not their natural setting. The value of psychological training is that it makes one as jealously mindful of wholeness in facts as a housewife of wholeness in her porcelain. It is, indeed, only when the whole fact is before us, in well-defined contour, that we can begin to deal with its meaning. Thus although those ignorant of psychology may assist us in this region of fact-finding, they can never accomplish that completer and exacter kind of observation which we dignify by the name of Science.

One may conclude then that women may be fitted to become valuable labourers in this new field of investigation, if only they will acquire a genuine scientific interest in babyhood, and a fair amount of scientific training. That a large number of women will get so far is I think doubtful: the sentimental or æsthetic attraction of the baby is apt to be a serious obstacle to a cold matter-of-fact examination of it as a scientific specimen. The natural delight of a mother in every new exhibition of infantile wisdom or prowess is liable to blind her to the exceedingly modest significance of the child's performances as seen from the scientific point of view. Yet as I have hinted, this very fondness for infantile ways, may, if only the scientific caution is added, prove a valuable excitant to study. In England, and in America, there are already a considerable number of women who have undergone some serious training in psychology, and it may not be too much to hope that before long we shall have a band of mothers and aunts busily engaged in noting and recording the movements of children's minds.

I have assumed here that what is wanted is careful studies of individual children as they may be approached in the nursery. And these records of individual children, after the pattern of Preyer's monograph, are I think our greatest need. We are wont to talk rather too glibly about that abstraction, "the child," as if all children rigorously corresponded to one pattern, of which pattern we have a perfect knowledge. Mothers at least know that this is not so. Children of the same family will be found to differ very widely (within the comparatively narrow field of childish traits), as, for example, in respect of matter-of-factness, of fancifulness, of inquisitiveness. Thus, while it is probably true that most children at a certain age are greedy of the pleasures of the imagination, Nature in her well-known dislike of monotony has taken care to make a few decidedly unimaginative. We need to know much more about these variations: and what will best help us here is a number of careful records of infant progress, embracing examples not only of different sexes and temperaments, but also of different social conditions and nationalities. When we have such a collection of monographs we shall be in a much better position to fill out the hazy outline of our abstract conception of childhood with definite and characteristic lineaments.

At the same time I gladly allow that other modes of observation are possible and in their way useful. This applies to older children who pass into the collective existence of the school-class. Here something like collective or statistical inquiry may be begun, as that into the contents of children's minds, their ignorances and misapprehensions about common objects. Some part of this inquiry into the minds of school children may very well be undertaken by an intelligent teacher. Thus it would be valuable to have careful records of children's progress carried out by pre-arranged tests, so as to get collections of examples of mental activity at different ages. More special lines of inquiry having a truly experimental character might be carried out by experts, as those already begun with reference to children's "span of apprehension," _i.e._, the number of digits or nonsense syllables that can be reproduced after a single hearing, investigations into the effects of fatigue on mental processes, into the effect of number of repetitions on the certainty of reproduction, into musical sensitiveness and so forth.

Valuable as such statistical investigation undoubtedly is, it is no substitute for the careful methodical study of the individual child. This seems to me the greatest desideratum just now. Since the teacher needs for practical reasons to make a careful study of individuals he might well assist here. In these days of literary collaboration it might not be amiss for a kindergarten teacher to write an account of a child's mind in co-operation with the mother. Such a record if well done would be of the greatest value. The co-operation of the mother seems to me quite indispensable, since even where there is out-of-class intercourse between teacher and pupil the knowledge acquired by the former never equals that of the mother.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The great advantage which the female observer of the infant's mind has over her male competitor is clearly illustrated in some recent studies of childhood by American women. I would especially call attention to a study by Miss M. W. Shinn, (University of California series) _Notes on the Development of a Child_ (the writer's niece), where the minute and painstaking record (e.g. of the child's colour-discrimination and visual space exploration) points to the ample opportunity of observation which comes more readily to women.

[2] "Mental Development in the Child and the Race," chap. III.

TWINS, THEIR HISTORY AS A CRITERION OF THE RELATIVE POWERS OF NATURE AND NURTURE

FRANCIS GALTON

[Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, has won eminence
by bringing problems of human development to the test of
statistical inquiry. Among his works are "Hereditary Genius,"
"English Men of Science, Their Nature and Nurture," "Human
Faculty," and "Natural Inheritance." The study of Twins here
presented is taken from "Human Faculty," published by
Macmillan & Co., London, 1883.]

The exceedingly close resemblance attributed to twins has been the subject of many novels and plays, and most persons have felt a desire to know upon what basis of truth those works of fiction may rest. But twins have many other claims to attention, one of which will be discussed in the present memoir. It is, that their history affords means of distinguishing between the effects of tendencies received at birth, and of those that were imposed by the circumstances of their after lives; in other words, between the effects of nature and of nurture. This is a subject of especial importance in its bearings on investigations into mental heredity, and I, for my part, have keenly felt the difficulty of drawing the necessary distinction whenever I tried to estimate the degree in which mental ability was, on the average, inherited. The objection to statistical evidence in proof of its inheritance has always been: "The persons whom 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 to trifling accidental circumstances that the bent of his disposition and his success are mainly due, and these you leave wholly out of account--in fact, they do not admit of being tabulated, and therefore your statistics, however plausible at first sight, are really of very little use." No method of enquiry which I have been able to carry out--and I have tried many methods--is wholly 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 the respective effects of nature and nurture, and to ascertain their several shares in framing the disposition and intellectual ability of men. The life history of twins supplies what I wanted. We might begin by enquiring about twins who were closely alike in boyhood and youth, and who were educated together for many years, and learn 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 may obtain much direct evidence of the kind we want; but we can also obtain yet more valuable evidence by a converse method. We can enquire into the history of twins who were exceedingly unlike in childhood, and learn how far they became assimilated under the influence of their identical nurtures; having 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 enquiry to persons who were either twins themselves or the near relations of twins. The printed questions were in thirteen groups; the last of them asked for the addresses of other twins known to the recipient who might be likely 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.

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 have usually more than one young one at a birth, and the other corresponding to those double-yolked eggs that are due to two germinal spots in a single ovum. 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 a few would greatly exceed that degree of likeness, and a few would greatly fall short of it; but this is not at all the case. Twins may be divided into three groups, so distinct that there are not many intermediate instances; namely, strongly alike, moderately alike, and extremely dissimilar. When the twins are a boy and a girl, they are never closely alike; in fact, their origin never corresponds to that of the above-mentioned double-yolked eggs.

I have received about eighty returns of cases of close similarity, thirty-five of 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 and eyes were almost always identical; the height, weight, and strength were generally very nearly so, but I have a few cases of a notable difference in these, notwithstanding the resemblance was otherwise very near. The manner and address of the thirty-five pairs of twins is usually described as being very similar, though there often exists a difference of expression familiar to near relatives but unperceived 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, that one point in which similarity is rare is the handwriting. I cannot account for this, considering how strongly handwriting runs in families, but I am 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 in 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.

One of my enquiries was for anecdotes as regards the mistakes made by near relatives between the twins. They are numerous, but not very varied in character. When the twins are children, they have commonly to be distinguished by ribbons tied round their wrist or neck; nevertheless the one is sometimes fed, physicked, and whipped by mistake for the other, and the description of these little domestic catastrophes is usually given to me 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, on resuming it, could not tell to which child the respective likenesses he had in hand belonged. The mistakes are less numerous on the part of the mother during the boyhood and girlhood of the twins, but almost as frequent on the part of strangers. I have many instances of tutors being unable to distinguish their twin pupils. Thus, two girls used regularly to impose on their music teacher when one of them wanted a whole holiday; they had their lessons at separate hours, and the one girl sacrificed herself to receive two lessons on the same day, while the other one enjoyed herself. Here is a brief and comprehensive account: "Exactly alike in all, their schoolmasters 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 was the guilty one, and the complainants were never certain which of the two he was. One head master used to say he would never flog the innocent for the guilty, and another used to flog both. No less than nine anecdotes have reached me of a twin seeing his or her reflection in a looking-glass, and addressing it, in the belief it was the other twin in person. I have many anecdotes of mistakes when the twins were nearly grown up. Thus: "Amusing scenes occurred at college when one twin came to visit the other; the porter on one occasion refused 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 parents 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. that I remember, as a child, being very much puzzled, and I think, had my aunt lived much with us, I should have ended by thinking I had two mothers." The other, a father of twins, remarks: "We were extremely alike, and are so at this moment, so much so that our children up to five and six years old did not know us apart."

I have four or five instances of doubt during an engagement of marriage. Thus: "A married first, but both twins met the lady together for the first time, and fell in love with her there and then. A 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 quaint 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 the 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 between 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 that I have: it was sent me by the brother of the twins, who were in middle life at the time of its occurrence: "A was again coming home from India, on leave; the ship did not arrive for some days after it was due; the twin brother B had come up from his quarters to receive A, and their old mother was very nervous. One morning A rushed in, saying, 'Oh, mother, how are you?' Her answer was, 'No, B, it's a bad joke; you know how anxious I am!' and it was a little time before A could persuade her that he was the real man."

Enough has been said to prove that an extremely close personal resemblance frequently exists between twins of the same sex; and that, although the resemblance usually diminishes as they grow into manhood and womanhood, some cases occur in which the resemblance is lessened in a hardly perceptible degree. It must be borne in mind that the divergence of development, when it occurs, need not be ascribed to the effect of different nurtures, but that it is quite possible that it may be due to the appearance of qualities inherited at birth, though dormant, like gout, in early life. To this I shall recur.

There is a curious feature in the character of the resemblance between twins, which has been alluded to by a few correspondents: it is well illustrated by the following quotations. A mother of twins says: "There seems to be a sort of interchangeable likeness in expression, that often gave to each the affect of being more like his brother than himself." Again, two twin brothers, writing to me, after analysing their points of resemblance, which are close and numerous, and pointing out certain shades of difference, add: "These seem to have marked us through life, though for a while when we were first separated, the one to go to business, and the other to college, our respective characters were inverted; we both think that at that time we each ran into the character of the other. The proof of this consists in our own recollections, in our correspondence by letter, and in the views which we then took of matters in which we were interested." 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 dominant one in both cases. Now it is by their dominant expressions that we should distinguish between the twins; consequently when one twin has temporarily the expression which is the dominant 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 by equal steps; 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, the end being that the twins become closely alike. This process would aid in giving an interchangeable likeness at certain periods of their growth, and is undoubtedly due to nature more frequently than to nurture.

Among my thirty-five detailed cases of close similarity, there are no less than seven 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 of not being able to come down stairs quickly, which, however, was not born with them, but came on at the age of twenty." Another pair of twins have a slight congenital 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, one was born ruptured, and the other became so at six months old. Two twins at the age of twenty-three were attacked by 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. The outline 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 Bright's disease, and the other also sickened of the same disease and died seven months later.

In no less than nine out of the thirty-five cases does it appear that both twins are apt to sicken at the same time. This implies so intimate a constitutional resemblance, that it is proper to give some quotations in 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 has been the case with whooping cough, chicken-pox, and measles; also with slight bilious attacks, which they have successively. Latterly, they had a feverish attack at the same time." Another parent of twins says: "If anything ails 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 twenty-four hours the other had precisely the same symptoms."

A medical man writes of twins with whom he is well acquainted: "Whilst I knew them, for a period of two years, there was not the slightest tendency towards a difference in body or mind; external influences seemed powerless to produce any dissimilarity." The mother of two other twins, after describing how they were ill simultaneously up to the age of fifteen, adds, that they shed their first milk teeth within a few hours of each other.

Trousseau has a very remarkable case (in the chapter on Asthma) in his important work, "Clinique Médicale." It was quoted at length in the original French in Mr. Darwin's "Variation Under Domestication," vol. ii. p. 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 for they had, so to speak, a yet more remarkable pathological resemblance. Thus, one of them, whom I saw at the Néothermes at Paris, suffering from rheumatic ophthalmia, said to me, 'At this instant, my brother must be having an ophthalmia like mine;' and, as I had exclaimed against such an assertion, he showed me a few days afterwards a letter just received 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 the less exact: it has not been told to me by others, but I have seen it myself; and I have seen other analogous cases in my practice. These twins were also asthmatic, and asthmatic to a frightful degree. Though born in Marseilles, they never were 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 Toulon in order to be cured of the attack caught at Marseilles. 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 a most dramatic tale in the _Psychologie Morbide_ of Dr. J. Moreau (de Tours), Médecin de l'Hospice de Bicetre. Paris, 1859, p. 172. He speaks "of two twin brothers who had been confined, on account of monomania, at Bicetre.... 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 is most remarkable in its details. Thus, their dominant ideas are absolutely the same. They both consider themselves subject to imaginary persecutions; the same enemies have sworn their destruction, and employ the same means to effect it. Both have hallucinations of hearing. They are both of them 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, and many months, without appreciable cause, and by the purely spontaneous effect of their illness, a very marked change takes place in the condition of the two brothers. Both of them, at the same time, and often on the same day, rouse 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 this strange thing occur, even when they were some miles apart, the one being at Bicetre and the other living at Sainte-Anne."

Dr. Moreau ranked as a very considerable medical authority, but I cannot wholly accept this strange story without fuller information. Dr. Moreau writes it in too off-hand a way to carry the conviction that he had investigated the circumstances with the sceptic spirit and scrupulous exactness which so strange a phenomenon would have required. If full and precise notes of the case exist, they certainly ought to be published at length. 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 any similar case. In reply, I have received three noteworthy instances, but none to be compared in their exact parallelism with that just given. The details of these 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 Professor Paget, described by Dr. Baume in the _Annales Medico-Psychologiques_, 4 série, vol. i., 1863, p. 312, of which the following is an abstract. The original contains a few more details, but it is too long to quote: Francois and Martin, fifty years of age, worked as railroad contractors between Quimper and Châteaulin. Martin had twice had slight attacks of insanity. On January 15, a box in which the twins deposited their savings was robbed. On the night of January 23-4 both Francois (who lodged at Quimper) and Martin (who lived with his wife and children at St. Lorette, two leagues from Quimper) had the same dream at the same hour, three A. M., and both awoke with a violent start, calling out, "I have caught the thief! I have caught the thief! they are doing injury 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 the thief, and would have strangled him if he had not been prevented: he then became steadily worse, complained of violent pains in his head, went out of doors on some excuse, and tried to drown himself in the River Steir, but was forcibly stopped by his son, who had watched and followed him. He was then taken to an asylum by gendarmes, where he died in three days. Francois, on his part calmed down on the morning of the 24th, and employed the day in enquiring about the robbery. By a strange chance he crossed his brother's path at the moment when the latter was struggling with the gendarmes; then he himself became maddened, giving way to extravagant gestures and making incoherent proposals (similar to those of his brother). He then asked to be bled, which was done, and afterwards, declaring himself to be better, went out on the pretext of executing some commission, but really to drown himself in the River Steir, which he actually did, at the very spot where Martin had attempted to do the same thing a few hours previously.