hey are quite different. I think I may
say the dissimilarity was innate, and developed more by time than
circumstance."

(12.) "We were never in the least degree alike. I should say my
sister's and my own character are diametrically opposed, and have
been utterly different from our birth, though a very strong
affection subsists between us."

(13.) The father remarks:--"They were curiously different in body
and mind from their birth."

The surviving twin (a senior wrangler of Cambridge) adds:--"A fact
struck all our school contemporaries, that my brother and I were
complementary, so to speak, in point of ability and disposition. He
was contemplative, poetical, and literary to a remarkable degree,
showing great power in that line. I was practical, mathematical, and
linguistic. Between us we should have made a very decent sort of a
man."

I could quote others just as strong as these, in some of which the
above phrase "complementary" also appears, while I have not a single
case in which my correspondents speak of originally dissimilar
characters having become assimilated 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 enor