830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



riably proves the genuine title-deed to the family estates and the hand 

 of the heroine. But, in real life, Huppim may always be readily dis- 

 tinguished from Muppim by some slight divergence of feature or ex- 

 pression ; Huz is always a trifle fatter or thinner than Buz, his brother ; 

 the two Dromios and the two Antipholuses may deceive the outer pub- 

 lic by their close resemblance, but not even Shakespeare himself can 

 make us believe that Mrs. Antipholus w^as really mistaken as to the 

 personal identity of her own husband. I don't want to be too hard 

 on a lady, but I fancy, myself, she was glad of the excuse for a 

 little innocent and easily explicable flirtation with an agreeable 

 stranger. 



Yes, everybody has a character and an idiosyncrasy different in 

 many points from everybody else's. Not even twins, who come closest 

 together of all humanity, merge their individuality absolutely into mere 

 replicas one of the other. Such utter identity is quite impossible in 

 the human family. And the reason, I think, is simply this : the infinite 

 number of separate traits possessed by each human being is too im- 

 mensely incalculable ever to admit of any two throws, however near, 

 producing precisely the same resultant. I do not doubt that there 

 may be snails or jelly-fish built absolutely on the same pattern in every 

 particular, mental or physical ; though, even there, the man that knows 

 them well is often astonished at the way in which one snail differs from 

 another in aspect, or one jelly-fish differs from another in character and 

 intellect. But while the papa snail and the mamma snail are distin- 

 guishable in a few traits only, discoverable by none but the close ob- 

 server, the papa and mamma among human beings are distinguishable 

 by ten thousand diverse peculiarities, mental and physical, all of them 

 obvious to the veriest outsider. Each child is, as it were, a meeting- 

 place and battle-field for these diverse paternal and maternal tenden- 

 cies. It must resemble one or the other in every fiber of every feature ; 

 it can't possibly resemble both exactly in those points in which they con- 

 spicuously differ. Hence the resultant is, so to speak, a compromise 

 or accommodation between the two ; and the chances of the compro- 

 mise being ever absolutely equal in any two cases are practically none. 

 You might throw down the letters of the alphabet which compose 

 " Paradise Lost " for ever and ever, but you would never get even one 

 line by accident in the exact order that Milton wrote it. In the strug- 

 gle for life between each unit or cell that goes to make up brain and 

 face and nerve and muscle, here the father conquers, and there the 

 mother, and yonder a truce is struck between them ; but that any two 

 among the children should ever represent exactly the same result of 

 the desperate struggle is so infinitely improbable as to be practically 

 impossible. 



One last word as to the difficulty which some observers doubtless 

 find in making this theory fit in with the facts as they observe them. 

 While writing this paper, I paused in the midst, laid down my pen, 



