HANDWRITING

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 81, 5 April 1923, Page 3

HANDWRITING

* IS IT HEREDITARY? Charles .Darwin long ago recognised that handwriting was inherited, and this idea may be found scattered through scientific literature as an axiom for the past fifty years. For; the. most part, writing is the upshot of inheritance, childhood discipline, habits of 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 memßers of the same family, says the "Pall Mall Gazette." So strong is this similarity in' sbma families that it is often difficult for the expert to distinguish one member's hand from another's.. Indeed, the same ,w6rd written by different persons seems to b« writen 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 face, or eccentricity of manner, but more often it is the tout ensemble, something that cannnot be put;: into words and defined accurately, which causes old friends of parents to exclaim, "Isn't he like his father!" or "He it 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 absurd to expect a, grandfather of seventy to write like his son, of forty-five or his grandson of twenty, but there may be just comparison between the grandfather* writing of middle age and his eon'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 the father who has a style of handwriting which shows these peculiarities will frequently bequeath them, more or loss unaltered, to his son. ■ .-'.-,':•