Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development Part 12

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE QUALITY OF THE WORDS AND THAT OF THE IDEAS IN IMMEDIATE a.s.sOCIATION WITH THEM.

=========================================================================+ Number of words Sense Histrionic Purely Verbal in each Imagery. Names Phrases Total series. of and Persons. Quotations. ---------+----------+--------+-----------+------+ 26 "Abbey" series 46 12 32 17 107 20 "Abas.e.m.e.nt" " 25 26 11 17 79 29 "Afternoon" " 23 27 16 38 104 75 290 ---------+----------+--------+-----------+------+ "Abbey" series 43 11 30 16 100 "Abas.e.m.e.nt" " 32 33 13 22 100 "Afternoon" " 22 25 16 37 100 ==========================================================================

We see from this that the a.s.sociations of the "abbey" series are nearly half of them in sense imagery, and these were almost always visual. The names of persons also more frequently occurred in this series than in any other. It will be recollected that in Table II. I drew attention to the exceptionally large number, 33, in the last column. It was perhaps 20 in excess of what would have been expected from the general run of the other figures. This was wholly due to visual imagery of scenes with which I was first acquainted after reaching manhood, and shows, I think, that the scenes of childhood and youth, though vividly impressed on the memory, are by no means numerous, and may be quite thrown into the background by the abundance of after experiences; but this, as we have seen, is not the case with the other forms of a.s.sociation. Verbal memories of old date, such as Biblical sc.r.a.ps, family expressions, bits of poetry, and the like, are very numerous, and rise to the thoughts so quickly, whenever anything suggests them, that they commonly outstrip all compet.i.tors. a.s.sociations connected with the "abas.e.m.e.nt" series are strongly characterised by histrionic ideas, and by sense imagery, which to a great degree merges into a histrionic character. Thus the word "abhorrence" suggested to me, on three out of the four trials, an image of the att.i.tude of Martha in the famous picture of the raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo in the National Gallery.

She stands with averted head, doubly sheltering her face by her hands from even a sidelong view of the opened grave. Now I could not be sure how far I saw the picture as such, in my mental view, or how far I had thrown my own personality into the picture, and was acting it as actors might act a mystery play, by the puppets of my own brain, that were parts of myself. As a matter of fact, I entered it under the heading of sense imagery, but it might very properly have gone to swell the number of the histrionic entries.

The "afternoon" series suggested a great preponderance of mere catch words, showing how slowly I was able to realise the meaning of abstractions; the phrases intruded themselves before the thoughts became defined. It occasionally occurred that I puzzled wholly over a word, and made no entry at all; in thirteen cases either this happened, or else after one idea had occurred the second was too confused and obscure to admit of record, and mention of it had to be omitted in the foregoing Table. These entries have forcibly shown to me the great imperfection in my generalising powers; and I am sure that most persons would find the same if they made similar trials.

Nothing is a surer sign of high intellectual capacity than the power of quickly seizing and easily manipulating ideas of a very abstract nature. Commonly we grasp them very imperfectly, and cling to their skirts with great difficulty.

In comparing the order in which the ideas presented themselves, I find that a decided precedence is a.s.sumed by the histrionic ideas, wherever they occur; that verbal a.s.sociations occur first and with great quickness on many occasions, but on the whole that they are only a little more likely to occur first than second; and that imagery is decidedly more likely to be the second than the first of the a.s.sociations called up by a word. In short, gesture-language appeals the most quickly to my feelings,

It would be very instructive to print the actual records at length, made by many experimenters, if the records could be clubbed together and thrown into a statistical form; but it would be too absurd to print one's own singly. They lay bare the foundations of a man's thoughts with curious distinctness, and exhibit his mental anatomy with more vividness and truth than he would probably care to publish to the world.

It remains to summarise what has been said in the foregoing memoir.

I have desired to show how whole 1 strata of mental operations that have lapsed out of ordinary consciousness, admit of being dragged into light, recorded and treated statistically, and how the obscurity that attends the initial steps of our thoughts can thus be pierced and dissipated. I then showed measurably the rate at which a.s.sociations sprung up, their character, the date of their first formation, their tendency to recurrence, and their relative precedence. Also I gave an instance showing how the phenomenon of a long-forgotten scene, suddenly starting into consciousness, admitted in many cases of being explained. Perhaps the strongest of the impressions left by these experiments regards the multifariousness of the work done by the mind in a state of half-unconsciousness, and the valid reason they afford for believing in the existence of still deeper strata of mental operations, sunk wholly below the level of consciousness, which may account for such mental phenomena as cannot otherwise be explained. We gain an insight by these experiments into the marvellous number and nimbleness of our mental a.s.sociations, and we also learn that they are very far indeed from being infinite in their variety. We find that our working stock of ideas is narrowly limited and that the mind continually recurs to the same instruments in conducting its operations, therefore its tracks necessarily become more defined and its flexibility diminished as age advances.

ANTECHAMBER OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

When I am engaged in trying to think anything out, the process of doing so appears to me to be this: The ideas that lie at any moment within my full consciousness seem to attract of their own accord the most appropriate out of a number of other ideas that are lying close at hand, but imperfectly within the range of my consciousness. There seems to be a presence-chamber in my mind where full consciousness holds court, and where two or three ideas are at the same time in audience, and an antechamber full of more or less allied ideas, which is situated just beyond the full ken of consciousness. Out of this antechamber the ideas most nearly allied to those in the presence-chamber appear to be summoned in a mechanically logical way, and to have their turn of audience.

The successful progress of thought appears to depend--first, on a large attendance in the antechamber; secondly, on the presence there of no ideas except such as are strictly germane to the topic under consideration; thirdly, on the justness of the logical mechanism that issues the summons. The thronging of the antechamber is, I am convinced, altogether beyond my control; if the ideas do not appear, I cannot create them, nor compel them to come. The exclusion of alien ideas is accompanied by a sense of mental effort and volition whenever the topic under consideration is unattractive, otherwise it proceeds automatically, for if an intruding idea finds nothing to cling to, it is unable to hold its place in the antechamber, and slides back again. An animal absorbed in a favourite occupation shows no sign of painful effort of attention; on the contrary, he resents interruption that solicits his attention elsewhere. The consequence of all this is that the mind frequently does good work without the slightest exertion. In composition it will often produce a better effect than if it acted with effort, because the essence of good composition is that the ideas should be connected by the easiest possible transitions. When a man has been thinking hard and long upon a subject, he becomes temporarily familiar with certain steps of thought, certain short cuts, and certain far-fetched a.s.sociations, that do not commend themselves to the minds of other persons, nor indeed to his own at other times; therefore, it is better that his transitory familiarity with them should have come to an end before he begins to write or speak. When he returns to the work after a sufficient pause he is conscious that his ideas have settled; that is, they have lost their advent.i.tious relations to one another, and stand in those in which they are likely to reside permanently in his own mind, and to exist in the minds of others.

Although the brain is able to do very fair work fluently in an automatic way, and though it will of its own accord strike out sudden and happy ideas, it is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without past or present effort.

The character of this effort seems to me chiefly to lie in bringing the contents of the antechamber more nearly within the ken of consciousness, which then takes comprehensive note of all its contents, and compels the logical faculty to test them _seriatim_ before selecting the fittest for a summons to the presence-chamber.

Extreme fluency and a vivid and rapid imagination are gifts naturally and healthfully possessed by those who rise to be great orators or literary men, for they could not have become successful in those careers without it. The curious fact already alluded to of five editors of newspapers being known to me as having phantasmagoria, points to a connection between two forms of fluency, the literary and the visual. Fluency may be also a morbid faculty, being markedly increased by alcohol (as poets are never tired of telling us), and by various drugs; and it exists in delirium, insanity, and states of high emotions. The fluency of a vulgar scold is extraordinary.

In preparing to write or speak upon a subject of which the details have been mastered, I gather, after some inquiry, that the usual method among persons who have the gift of fluency is to think cursorily on topics connected with it, until what I have called the antechamber is well filled with cognate ideas. Then, to allow the ideas to link themselves in their own way, breaking the linkage continually and recommencing afresh until some line of thought has suggested itself that appears from a rapid and light glance to thread the chief topics together. After this the connections are brought step by step fully into consciousness, they are short-circuited here and extended there, as found advisable until a firm connection is found to be established between all parts of the subject. After this is done the mental effort is over, and the composition may proceed fluently in an automatic way. Though this, I believe, is a usual way, it is by no means universal, for there are very great differences in the conditions under which different persons compose most readily. They seem to afford as good evidence of the variety of mental and bodily const.i.tutions as can be met with in any other line of inquiry.

It is very reasonable to think that part at least of the inward response to spiritual yearnings is of similar origin to the visions, thoughts, and phrases that arise automatically when the mind has prepared itself to receive them. The devout man attunes his mind to holy ideas, he excludes alien thoughts, and he waits and watches in stillness. Gradually the darkness is lifted, the silence of the mind is broken, and the spiritual responses are heard in the way so often described by devout men of all religions. This seems to me precisely a.n.a.logous to the automatic presentation of ordinary ideas to orators and literary men, and to the visions of which I spoke in the chapter on that subject. Dividuality replaces individuality, and one portion of the mind communicates with another portion as with a different person.

Some persons and races are naturally more imaginative than others, and show their visionary tendency in every one of the respects named.

They are fanciful, oratorical, poetical, and credulous. The "enthusiastic" faculties all seem to hang together; I shall recur to this in the chapter on enthusiasm.

I have already pointed out the existence of a morbid form of piety: there is also a morbid condition of apparent inspiration to which imaginative women are subject, especially those who suffer more or less from hysteria. It is accompanied in a very curious way, familiar to medical men, by almost incredible acts of deceit. It is found even in ladies of position apparently above the suspicion of vulgar fraud, and seems a.s.sociated with a strange secret desire to attract notice. Ecstatics, seers of visions, and devout fasting girls who eat on the sly, often belong to this category.

EARLY SENTIMENTS.

The child is pa.s.sionately attached to his home, then to his school, his country, and religion; yet how entirely the particular home, school, country, and religion are a matter of accident! He is born prepared to attach himself as a climbing plant is naturally disposed to climb, the kind of stick being of little importance. The models upon whom the child or boy forms himself are the boys or men whom he has been thrown amongst, and whom from some incidental cause he may have learned to love and respect. The every-day utterances, the likes and dislikes of his parents, their social and caste feelings, their religious persuasions are absorbed by him; their views or those of his teachers become a.s.similated and made his own. If a mixed marriage should have taken place, and the father should die while the children are yet young, and if a question arise between the executors of his will and the mother as to the religious education of the children, application is made as a matter of course to the Court of Chancery, who decide that the children shall be brought up as Protestants or as Catholics as the case may be, or the sons one way and the daughters the other; and they are, and usually remain so afterwards when free to act for themselves.

It is worthy of note that many of the deaf-mutes who are first taught to communicate freely with others after they had pa.s.sed the period of boyhood, and are asked about their religious feelings up to that time, are reported to tell the same story. They say that the meaning of the church service whither they had accompanied their parents, and of the kneeling to pray, had been absolutely unintelligible, and a standing puzzle to them. The ritual touched no chord in their untaught natures that responded in unison. Very much of what we fondly look upon as a natural religious sentiment is purely traditional.

The word religion may fairly be applied to any group of sentiments or persuasions that are strong enough to bind us to do that which we intellectually may acknowledge to be our duty, and the possession of some form of religion in this larger sense of the word is of the utmost importance to moral stability. The sentiments must be strong enough to make us ashamed at the mere thought of committing, and distressed during the act of committing any untruth, or any uncharitable act, or of neglecting what we feel to be right, in order to indulge in laziness or gratify some pa.s.sing desire. So long as experience shows the religion to be competent to produce this effect, it seems reasonable to believe that the particular dogma is comparatively of little importance. But as the dogma or sentiments, whatever they be, if they are not naturally instinctive, must be ingrained in the character to produce their full effect, they should be instilled early in life and allowed to grow unshaken until their roots are firmly fixed. The consciousness of this fact makes the form of religious teaching in every church and creed identical in one important particular though its substance may vary in every respect. In subjects unconnected with sentiment, the freest inquiry and the fullest deliberation are required before it is thought decorous to form a final opinion; but wherever sentiment is involved, and especially in questions of religious dogma, about which there is more sentiment and more difference of opinion among wise, virtuous, and truth-seeking men than about any other subject whatever, free inquiry is peremptorily discouraged. The religious instructor in every creed is one who makes it his profession to saturate his pupils with prejudice. A vast and perpetual clamour arises from the pulpits of endless proselytising sects throughout this great empire, the priests of all of them crying with one consent, "This is the way, shut your ears to the words of those who teach differently; don't look at their books, do not even mention their names except to scoff at them; they are d.a.m.nable. Have faith in what I tell you, and save your souls!" In which of these conflicting doctrines are we to place our faith if we are not to hear all sides, and to rely upon our own judgment in the end? Are we to understand that it is the duty of man to be credulous in accepting whatever the priest in whose neighbourhood he happens to reside may say? Is it to believe whatever his parents may have lovingly taught him? There are a vast number of foolish men and women in the world who marry and have children, and because they deal lovingly with their children it does not at all follow that they can instruct them wisely. Or is it to have faith in what the wisest men of all ages have found peace in believing? The Catholic phrase, "_quod semper quod ubique quod omnibus_"--"that which has been believed at all times, in all places, and by all men"--has indeed a fine rolling sound, but where is the dogma that satisfies its requirements? Or is it, such and such really good and wise men with whom you are acquainted, and whom, it may be, you have the privilege of knowing, have lived consistent lives through the guidance of these dogmas, how can you who are many grades their inferior in good works, in capacity and in experience, presume to set up your opinion against theirs? The reply is, that it is a matter of history and notoriety that other very good, capable, and inexperienced men have led and are leading consistent lives under the guidance of totally different dogmas, and that some of them a few generations back would have probably burned your modern hero as a heretic if he had lived in their times and they could have got hold of him. Also, that men, however eminent in goodness, intellect, and experience, may be deeply prejudiced, and that their judgment in matters where their prejudices are involved cannot thenceforward be trusted. Watches, as electricians know to their cost, are liable to have their steel work accidentally magnetised, and the best chronometer under those conditions can never again be trusted to keep correct time.

Lastly, we are told to have faith in our conscience? well we know now a great deal more about conscience than formerly. Ethnologists have studied the manifestations of conscience in different people, and do not find that they are consistent. Conscience is now known to be partly transmitted by inheritance in the way and under the conditions clearly explained by Mr. Darwin, and partly to be an unsuspected result of early education. The value of inherited conscience lies in its being the organised result of the social experiences of many generations, but it fails in so far as it expresses the experience of generations whose habits differed from our own. The doctrine of evolution shows that no race can be in perfect harmony with its surroundings; the latter are continually changing, while the organism of the race hobbles after, vainly trying to overtake them. Therefore the inherited part of conscience cannot be an infallible guide, and the acquired part of it may, under the influence of dogma, be a very bad one. The history of fanaticism shows too clearly that this is not only a theory but a fact. Happy the child, especially in these inquiring days, who has been taught a religion that mainly rests on the moral obligations between man and man in domestic and national life, and which, so far as it is necessarily dogmatic, rests chiefly upon the proper interpretation of facts about which there is no dispute,--namely, on those habitual occurrences which are always open to observation, and which form the basis of so-called natural religion.

It would be instructive to make a study of the working religion of good and able men of all nations, in order to discover the real motives by which they were severally animated,--men, I mean, who had been tried by both prosperity and adversity, and had borne the test; who, while they led lives full of interest to themselves, were beloved by their own family, noted among those with whom they had business relations for their probity and conciliatory ways, and honoured by a wider circle for their unselfish furtherance of the public good. Such men exist of many faiths and in many races.

Another interesting and cognate inquiry would be into the motives that have sufficed to induce men who were leading happy lives, to meet death willingly at a time when they were not particularly excited. Probably the number of instances to be found, say among Mussulmans, who are firm believers in the joys of Mahomet's Paradise, would not be more numerous than among the Zulus, who have no belief in any paradise at all, but are influenced by martial honour and patriotism. There is an Oriental phrase, as I have been told, that the fear of the inevitable approach of death is a European malady.

Terror at any object is quickly taught if it is taught consistently, whether the terror be reasonable or not. There are few more stupid creatures than fish, but they notoriously soon learn to be frightened at any newly-introduced method of capture, say by an artificial fly, which, at first their comrades took greedily. Some one fish may have seen others caught, and have learned to take fright at the fly. Whenever he saw it again he would betray his terror by some instinctive gesture, which would be seen and understood by others, and so instruction in distrusting the fly appears to spread.

All gregarious animals are extremely quick at learning terrors from one another. It is a condition of their existence that they should do so, as was explained at length in a previous chapter. Their safety lies in mutual intelligence and support. When most of them are browsing a few are always watching, and at the least signal of alarm the whole herd takes fright simultaneously. Gregarious animals are quickly alive to their mutual signals; it is beautiful to watch great flocks of birds as they wheel in their flight and suddenly show the flash of all their wings against the sky, as they simultaneously and suddenly change their direction. Much of the tameness or wildness of an animal's character is probably due to the placidity or to the frequent starts of alarm of the mother while she was rearing it. I was greatly struck with some evidence I happened to meet with, of the pervading atmosphere of alarm and suspicion in which the children of criminal parents are brought up, and which, in combination with their inherited disposition, makes them, in the opinion of many observers, so different to other children. The evidence of which I speak lay in the tone of letters sent by criminal parents to their children, who were inmates of the Princess Mary Village Homes, from which I had the opportunity, thanks to the kindness of the Superintendent, Mrs. Meredith, of hearing and seeing extracts. They were full of such phrases as "Mind you do not say anything about this," though the matters referred to were, to all appearance, unimportant.

The writings of Dante on the horrible torments of the d.a.m.ned, and the realistic pictures of the same subject in frescoes and other pictures of the same date, showing the flames and the flesh hooks and the harrows, indicate the transforming effect of those cruel times, fifteen generations ago, upon the disposition of men. Revenge and torture had been so commonly practised by rulers that they seemed to be appropriate attributes of every high authority, and the artists of those days saw no incongruity in supposing that a supremely powerful master, however beneficent he might be, would make the freest use of them.

Aversion is taught as easily as terror, when the object of it is neutral and not especially attractive to an unprejudiced taste. I can testify in my own person to the somewhat rapidly-acquired and long-retained fancies concerning the clean and unclean, upon which Jews and Mussulmans lay such curious stress. It was the result of my happening to spend a year in the East, at an age when the brain is very receptive of new ideas, and when I happened to be much impressed by the n.o.bler aspects of Mussulman civilisation, especially, I may say, with the manly conformity of their every-day practice to their creed, which contrasts sharply with what we see among most Europeans, who profess extreme unworldliness and humiliation on one day of the week, and act in a worldly and masterful manner during the remaining six. Although many years have pa.s.sed since that time, I still find the old feelings in existence--for instance, that of looking on the left hand as unclean.

It is difficult to an untravelled Englishman, who has not had an opportunity of throwing himself into the spirit of the East, to credit the disgust and detestation that numerous every-day acts, which appear perfectly harmless to his countrymen, excite in many Orientals.

To conclude, the power of nurture is very great in implanting sentiments of a religious nature, of terror and of aversion, and in giving a fallacious sense of their being natural instincts. But it will be observed that the circ.u.mstances from which these influences proceed, affect large cla.s.ses simultaneously, forming a kind of atmosphere in which every member of them pa.s.ses his life. They produce the cast of mind that distinguishes an Englishman from a foreigner, and one cla.s.s of Englishman from another, but they have little influence in creating the differences that exist between individuals of the same cla.s.s.

HISTORY OF TWINS.

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 a special claim upon our attention; it is, that their history affords means of distinguis.h.i.+ng between the effects of tendencies received at birth, and of those that were imposed by the special circ.u.mstances of their after lives. The objection to statistical evidence in proof of the inheritance of peculiar faculties 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 circ.u.mstances 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 inquiry which I had previously 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 effects of Nature and Nurture, and to ascertain their respective shares in framing the disposition and intellectual ability of men. The life-history of twins supplies what I wanted. We may begin by inquiring 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 can obtain direct evidence of the kind we want. Again, we may obtain yet more valuable evidence by a converse method. We can inquire into the history of twins who were exceedingly unlike in childhood, and learn how far their characters became a.s.similated under the influence of identical nurture, inasmuch as they had the same home, the same teachers, the same a.s.sociates, and in every other respect the same surroundings.

My materials were obtained by sending circulars of inquiry to persons who were either twins themselves or 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 acc.u.mulated for a general reconnaisance of the subject.

There is a large literature relating to twins in their purely surgical and physiological aspect. The reader interested in this should consult _Die Lehre von den Zwillingen_, von L. Kleinwachter, Prag. 1871. It is full of references, but it is also unhappily disfigured by a number of numerical misprints, especially in page 26.

I have not found any book that treats of twins from my present point of view.

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 usually bear more than one at a birth, each of the progeny being derived from a separate ovum, while the other event is due to the development of two germinal spots in the same ovum. In the latter case they are enveloped in the same membrane, and all such twins are found invariably to be of the same s.e.x. 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 average likeness, and a few would greatly fall short of it. But this is not at all the case. Extreme similarity and extreme dissimilarity between twins of the same s.e.x are nearly as common as moderate resemblance. When the twins are a boy and a girl, they are never closely alike; in fact, their origin is never due to the development of two germinal spots in the same ovum.

I 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 nearly so.

Nevertheless, I have a few cases of a notable difference in height, weight, and strength, although the resemblance was otherwise very near. The manner and personal address of the thirty-five pairs of twins are usually described as very similar, but accompanied by a slight difference of expression, familiar to near relatives, though 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, the 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 n.o.body, 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.

It would appear that the handwriting is a very delicate test of difference in organisation--a conclusion which I commend to the notice of enthusiasts in the art of discovering character by the handwriting.

One of my inquiries was for anecdotes regarding mistakes made between the twins by their near relatives. The replies are numerous, but not very varied in character. When the twins are children, they are usually distinguished by ribbons tied round the 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 was usually given 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 become less numerous on the part of the mother during the boyhood and girlhood of the twins, but are almost as frequent as before on the part of strangers. I have many instances of tutors being unable to distinguish their twin pupils. 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 from morning to evening. 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-gla.s.s, and addressing it in the belief it was the other twin in person.