Volume 1

First principles / by Herbert Spencer.

  • Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: First principles / by Herbert Spencer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    86/252 (page 62)
    adjusted become numerous, complex, and remote in time or space. Every advance in Intelligence essentially consists in the establish- ment of more varied, more complete, or more involved adjustments. And even the highest generalizations of science consist of mental relations of co-existence and sequence, so co-ordinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of co-existence and sequence that occur externally. A caterpillar, finding its way on to a plant having a certain odour, begins to eat—has inside of it an organic relation between a particular impression and a particular set of actions, answering to the relation outside of it between scent and nutriment. The sparrow, guided by the more complex correlation of impressions which the colour, form, and movements of the caterpillar gave it, and guided by other correlations which measure the position and distance of the caterpillar, adjusts certain correlated muscular movements so as to seize the caterpillar. Through a much greater distance is the hawk, hovering above, affected by the relations of shape and motion which the sparrow presents ; and the much more complicated and prolonged series of related nervous and muscular changes, gone through in corre- spondence with the sparrow’s changing relations of position, finally succeed when they are precisely adjusted to these changing relations. In the fowler, experience has established a relation between the appearance and flight of a hawk and the destruction of other birds, including game. There is also in him an established relation between those visual impressions answering to a certain distance in space, and the range of his gun. And he has learned, too, what relations of position the sights must bear to a point somewhat in advance of the flying bird, before he can fire with success. Similarly if we go back to the manufactiue of the gun. By relations of co-existence between colour, density, and place in the earth, a particular mineral is known as one which yields iron; and the obtainment of iron from it, results when certain correlated acts of ours are adjusted to certain correlated affinities displayed by ironstone, coal, and lime, at a high temperature. If we descend yet a step further, and ask a chemist to explain the explosion of gunpowder, or apply to a mathematician for a theory of projectiles, we still find that special or general relations of co-existence and sequence among properties, motions, spaces, &c., are all they