THE CAUSE OF CHARACTER. 823 



teenth sliare of black blood by any possible test save documentary 

 evidence. 



Here, then, we have a clear, physical, and almost mathematically 

 demonstrable case, showing that, so far as regards bodily peculiarities 

 at least, the child is on the average just equally compounded of traits 

 derived from both its parents. Among hundreds and hundreds of 

 mulatto and quadroon children whom I have observed, I have never 

 known a single genuine instance to the contrary. Heredity comes out 

 exactly true ; you get just as much of each color in every case as you 

 would naturally expect to do from a mixture of given proportions. 

 In other words, all mulattoes are recognizably different from all quad- 

 roons, and all quadroons from all octoroons or all sambos. 



This simple fact, I venture to think, gives us at once the real key 

 to the whole complex problem of idiosyncrasy and character. Every 

 child on the average represents one half its father and one half its 

 mother. It is a Jones in this, and in that a Robinson. Here it takes 

 after its grandfather the earl, and there it resembles its grandmother 

 the washerwoman. These traits it derives from the distinguished De 

 Montmorencies, and those from the family of the late lamented Mr. 

 Peace the burglar. But, on the whole, however diversely and curi- 

 ously the various individual peculiarities may be compounded, it is at 

 bottom a Robinson-Jones, a complex of all its converging strains, its 

 diverse noble and ignoble ancestors. It represents a cumulative effect 

 of antecedent causes, all of which it shares equally on the average with 

 every one of its brothers and sisters. 



How does it happen, then, suggests the easy objector, that two 

 brothers or two sisters, born of the same father and mother, twins it 

 may even be, " are often more unlike each other in character and men- 

 tal qualities than any two ordinary strangers " ? Well, the answer 

 simply is, it doesn't happen. Make sui'e of your facts before you begin 

 to philosophize upon them. Children of the same parents are always 

 very much like one another in all essential fundamentals ; they may 

 differ a good deal among themselves, but their differences are really 

 and truly as nothing compared with the vast complexity of their re- 

 semblances. The case of twins, in fact, is a peculiarly unfortunate 

 one to allege in this respect, for Mr. Galton has collected an immense 

 mass of evidence tending to show that just as twins usually resemble 

 one another, almost indistinguishably, in face and feature, so do they 

 resemble one another almost as narrowly in character and intellect. 

 I know an instance myself of two twin sisters, one of whom has lived 

 all her life in India, and the other in England, but who, in spite of this 

 difference in circumstances, preserve so entirely their original identity 

 of form and nature that I do not myself in the least discriminate be- 

 tween them in any way, mentally or physically, though they happen 

 to be members of my own family. It does not at all matter to me 

 whether it was Polly who said a thing or Lucy. I regard it in either 



