as identical twins are to each other; for the family influences in each case are practically the same. Professor Thorndike, by careful mental tests, showed7 that this is not true. The ordinary brothers come from different egg-cells, and, as is known from studies on lower animals, they do not get exactly the same inheritance from their parents; they show, therefore, considerable differences in their psychic natures. Real identical twins, being two halves of the same egg-cell, have the same heredity, and their natures are therefore much more nearly identical.
Again, if the mind is molded during the "plastic years of childhood," children ought to become more alike, the longer they are together. Twins who were unlike at birth ought to resemble each other more closely at 14 than they did at 9, since they have been for five additional years subjected to this supposedly potent but very mystical "molding force." Here again Professor Thorndike's exact measurements explode the fallacy. They are actually, measurably, less alike at the older age; their inborn natures are developing along predestined lines, with little regard to the identity of their surroundings. Heredity accounts easily for these facts, but they cannot be squared with the idea that mental differences are the products solely of early training.
- Differential rates of increase in qualities subject to much training. If the mind is formed by training, then brothers ought to be more alike in qualities which have been subject to little or no training. Professor Thorndike's measurements on this point show the reverse to be true. The likeness of various traits is determined by heredity, and brothers may be more unlike in traits which have been subjected to a large and equal amount of training. Twins were found to be less alike in their ability at addition and multiplication, in which the schools had been training them for some years, than they were in ability to mark off the A's on a printed sheet, or to write the opposites to a list of words—feats which they had probably never before tried to do.