that it is difficult to tell them apart. Other twins resemble each other more than children in the same home born months apart.
Why some are alike and others are not.—If the creative moment of twins were the same, or nearly the same, the parents sustained to each the same combination of influences. If their creative moments occurred hours or even days apart, then there was time for one or both parents to sustain a different relation to one, from that they sustained to the other. This accounts for the difference between some twins. Not only do twins resemble each other physically, but often their mental and moral tastes and tendencies are very much alike.
Twin brothers.—I once met twin brothers sixty-seven years old. They had been lost to each other for fourteen years. They still resembled each other, dressed alike, wore their beards and hair alike, talked and laughed alike. Sixty-seven years had not greatly modified their physical and mental resemblance. Twin children usually inherit similar perfections or imperfections. This I have noticed for a number of years. Where I am now writing is a club-footed, rheumatic boy. His twin brother is feeble-minded. In an adjoining state a few days ago I studied a young man who was helpless from his arms down. His twin sister was helpless at birth and died in childhood. These examples indicate that the before-birth influences being the same, were the causes of these defects in the offspring.
An objection answered.—A man said to me, “I don’t believe in heredity.” I asked him why he did not. He replied, “I know of a drunken father who had four sons; two were dissipated from their youth and two were ‘teetotalers.’ If the father had had anything to do with this, all would have been drunkards.”
My reply was, “The father through the laws of heredity may have transmitted to two of his boys tendencies toward drunkenness and to the other two, tendencies toward sobriety. In the case of the first two, the father might have, in his mental and moral natures, favored intemperance, longed for alcohol, or been on a drunken debauch at the initial of their lives. With reference to the last two, the father might have temporarily reformed, mentally and morally, he might have been strongly opposed to the use of strong drink at the initial of their lives.