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Inquiries into Human Faculty
ilated through identity of nurture. However, a somewhat exaggerated
estimate of dissimilarity may be due to the tendency of relatives to dwell
unconsciously on distinctive peculiarities, and to disregard the far more
numerous points of likeness that would first attract the notice of a
stranger. Thus in case 11 I find the remark, “Strangers see a strong
likeness between them, but none who knows them well can perceive it.”
Instances are common of slight acquaintances mistaking members, and
especially daughters of a family, for one another, between whom intimate
friends can barely discover a resemblance. Still, making reasonable
allowance for unintentional exaggeration, the impression that all this
evidence leaves on the mind is one of some wonder whether nurture can
do anything at all, beyond giving instruction and professional training. It
emphatically corroborates and goes far beyond the conclusions to which
we had already been driven by the cases of similarity. In those, the causes
of divergence began to act about the period of adult life, when the
characters had become somewhat fixed; but here the causes conducive to
assimilation began to act from the earliest moment of the existence of the
twins, when the disposition was most pliant, and they were continuous
until the period of adult life. There is no escape from the conclusion that
nature prevails enormously over nurture when the differences of nurture
do not exceed what is commonly to be found among persons of the same
rank of society and in the same country. My fear is, that my evidence may
seem to prove too much, and be discredited on that account, as it appears
contrary to all experience that nurture should go for so little. But
experience is often fallacious in ascribing great effects to trifling
circumstances. Many a person has amused himself with throwing bits of
stick into a tiny brook and watching their progress; how they are arrested,
first by one chance obstacle, then by another; and again, how their onward
course is facilitated by a combination of circumstances. He might ascribe
much importance to each of these events, and think how largely the
destiny of the stick had been governed by a series of trifling accidents.
Nevertheless all the sticks succeed in passing down the current, and in the
long-run, they travel at nearly the same rate. So it is with life, in respect to
the several accidents which seem
