Many figures celebrated in history had their tic.
At the time of his early appearances Molière was held even in the provinces to be a comedian of a very inferior order, owing perhaps to a hiccough or throat tic of his leaving a disagreeable impression of his acting on those who were not aware of its existence.[33]
Brissaud recalls the curious picture of Peter the Great handed down to us by Saint-Simon[34]:
If he gave thought thereto, his mien became majestic and gracious, else was it forbidding, and almost savage, his eyes and his face occasionally distorted by a momentary tic that rendered his expression wild and terrible.
Similarly with the Emperor Napoleon[35]:
His moments, or rather his long hours, of work and meditation were characterised by the exhibition of a tic consisting in frequent and rapid elevation of the right shoulder, which those who did not know him sometimes interpreted as a sign of dissatisfaction and disapproval, seeking uneasily wherein they could have failed to please him.
Cases of tic in the descendants of great men are far from rare; we have met with several instances.
Among etiological factors of a general description, the rôle played by imitation is all-important, especially in the young. Mimicry is strong in the child's nature, and bad habits are quickly contracted. Should he be tainted with nervous weakness in addition, he is apt to tic on the slenderest pretext, in which case to encounter, or still more to be associated with, the subject of a tic would be the direst of misfortunes.
That such a contingency should arise is not essential. A novel gesture on the part of any one catches the child's attention, and he forthwith attempts its reproduction, finding therein a source of complacent satisfaction. On the morrow the movement is repeated, and again, till it oversteps the bounds of habit and enters the realm of tic.
Cruchet concedes this to be a possible though by no means invariable mode of tic production, for the reason that the unconscious, or, more correctly, subconscious—polygonal, if you will—nature of imitation is undeniable, indeed self-evident.