HANDWRITING.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17732, 7 April 1923, Page 6

HANDWRITING.

IS IT HEREDITARY ? Charles Darwin long ago recognised that handwriting was inherited, «nd this idea may bo found scattered through aoientifio literature as an axiom for the past fifty years.. For the most part, writing is the upshot of inheritance, childhood discipline, habits or character, temperament, disposition, and what may well be called your chronic mood. Mr R. H. Chandler has recently devoted, great care to the study and investigation of likenesses which exist in the writing of various members of "the same family, says "fcn© "Pall Mall Gazette." So strong is this similiarity in 80m« families that it is often difficult for the expert to distinguish one member's hand from another's. Indeed, the same word written by different persons seems to "be written many times by one. Likeness in handwriting follows the same general principle,' according to this investigator, as that which acts in families, as regards resemblances in face, motions, and that family likeness among human beings, which may be defined as an accumulation of indescribably faint suggestions of similarity rather than any strong identity. For instance, a family likeness may show itself by the colour of the eyes, shape of the nose, general outline of race, or eccentricity of manner, but more often it is the tout ensemble, something that cannot be put into words and defined accurately, which causes old' friends of parents to exclaim: "Isn't he like his father!" or "He is just like his father as a boy." This brings us to another point* of agreement between handwriting and ourselves, likeness at corresponding ages. It would, be a!fcsurd to expect a grandfather of seventy to write like his son of forty-five or his grandson of twenty, but there mav be just comparison between the grandfather's writing of middle age and his son's at the present time, or between that of the son and the grandson at corresponding ages. Another point of agreement is what may be called "peculiarities," and tho father who has a style of handwriting which shows the«e peculiarites will frequently bequeath them, more or less unaltered, to his son.