394 



The Journal of Heredity 



ties, etc. Let me suggest, as Dr. Fred- 

 erick Adams Woods has pointed out, 

 that we do not know how great or how 

 small are the physical differences which 

 are associated with very considerable 

 differences in these invisible mental and 

 moral characteristics. A close study of 

 these photographs will reveal that no 

 two of the most similar twins are abso- 

 lutely alike. Perhaps there is some 

 slight difference in the lobe of the ear 

 or the direction of the hair on the fore- 

 head. Supposing there were as slight a 

 difference in the lobes or convolutions 

 of the brain, who knows what changes 

 in intellect this might bring with it? 



In studying these photographs and 

 judging of their likenesses or unlike- 

 nesses, the fact ought to be kept in 

 mind that our eyes are more critical 

 about faces than about almost anything 

 else. From babyhood we have studied 

 each other's faces. Down through the 

 ages from geologic times man has made 

 a study of the human face, and it is 

 hardly to be wondered at that he has 

 a remarkable memory of its form and 

 can tell at a glance whether he has 

 seen a face which he once saw years 

 ago. This form memory, heightened no 

 doubt by natural selection, we bring to 

 bear on these photographs, and differ- 

 ences so slight as to escape our atten- 

 tion in horses or dogs are immediately 

 detected by us in these photographs. 



It may not appeal to some as im- 

 portant that we learn which of our 

 characteristics are hereditary and which 

 are environmental, but to those who 

 have given serious attention to the sub- 

 ject the matter appears to be of tran- 

 scendent importance, involving as it does 

 the whole question of our attitude to- 

 wards each other as human beings, our 

 understanding of the p-reat race ques- 

 tion, the limitations of education in the 

 elevation of races, and the understand- 

 ing of the fact, which is being con- 

 tinually lost sight of, that acqxiired 

 characters are not inherited, and that 

 education affects only the generation to 

 which it is given. 



Some of the most violent of our so- 

 called race antipathies are based upon 

 characters which are entirely environ- 

 mental. Language is one of these. But 

 table manners, fashions in foods and 

 clothes and methods of living, styles of 

 architecture, forms of address, attitudes 

 towards music and painting, behavior in 

 the relation of the sexes, emotional 

 likes and dislikes on sight, respectful- 

 ness and attractiveness, obedience and 

 disobedience, honesty and dishonesty, 

 bravery and cowardice — all these reac- 

 tions of the individual to his surround- 

 ings must be studied from the double 

 standpoint to determine how far the re- 

 sponse is the result of environment, 

 and how far it is the result of heredity, 

 for both factors are certainly there and 

 must be given their proper weight. 



When the barbers ascribe to the 

 wearing of hats the bald heads of the 

 old men, they are neglecting to give 

 the right weight to the fact that a man 

 inherits his particular type of baldness. 

 When a woman ascribes her alarming 

 increase in weight to the food she eats, 

 she is often neglecting to consider the 

 fact that she may have inherited the 

 tendency to become large from her 

 mother or her father, and the fact that 

 she had a sylph-like form as a young 

 girl tallies with the behavior of her 

 mother or father when they were 

 young. The old man past seventy who 

 becomes convinced that his long life 

 was caused by his not using tobacco or 

 the fact that he never ate any butter, 

 or that he always walked a mile or two 

 a day, or that he took a cold bath every 

 morning even if he had to break the 

 ice to do it, should not overlook the 

 fact that he comes from a long-lived 

 ancestry nor that other fact, pointed out 

 by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell,^ that of 

 1594 individuals examined only 6% 

 of those whose parents (both of them) 

 died under eighty, themseh^es lived to 

 be eighty; 10% of those having one 

 parent who lived to be eighty and 20% 

 of those having both parents who lived 

 to be eighty, lived to be eighty. 



1 "The Duratioii. of Life," Volta Building, Washington, D. C. "Who Shall Inherit 

 Long Life" Nat. Geographic, June, 1919. 



