356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



there is a sudden click, followed by a whirring of wheels ; the moment 

 that it touches it, the stroke falls. Necessitarians may derive new 

 aro:uments from the life-histories of twins. 



We will now consider the converse side of our subject. Hitherto 

 we have investigated cases where the similarity at first was close, but 

 afterward became less ; now we will examine those in which there 

 was great dissimilarity at first, and will see how far an identity of 

 nurture in childhood and 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 twenty such cases, given with much detail. It is a 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 this curious point, and on much else 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 twenty cases above mentioned is abso- 

 lutely accordant, so that the character of the whole may be exactly 

 conveyed by two or three quotations. 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." Here is another case : " I can answer most de- 

 cidedly 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 nursed by the same woman, went to school 

 together, and were never separated till the age of fifteen." Here 

 again is one more, in which the father remarks, " They were curious- 

 ly different in body and mind from their birth." The surviving twin 

 (a senior wrangler of Cambridge) adds : "A fact struck all our school 

 contemporaries, that my brother and I were complementary, so to 

 speak, in point of ability and disposition. He was contemplative, 

 poetical, 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 a man." I could quote 

 others just as strong as these, while I have not a single case in which 

 my corresjjondents speak of originally dissimilar characters having 

 become assimilated through identity of nurture. The impression 

 that all this evidence leaves on the mind is one of some wonder 

 whether nurture can do any thing at all beyond giving instruction 

 and professional training. It emphatically corroborates and goes far 

 beyond the conclusions to which we had already been driven by the 

 cases of similarity. In these, the causes of divergence began to act 

 about the period of adult life, when the characters had become some- 

 what fixed ; but here the causes conducive to assimilation began to 

 act from the earliest moment of the existence of the twins, when the 



