Volume 1

The principles of psychology / by Herbert Spencer.

  • Herbert Spencer
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of psychology / by Herbert Spencer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/670 page 34
    31 members of each group may be combined. Two things can be arranged in succession in only 2 different ways; three things can be arranged in 6 different ways; four things in 24 ways; five things in 120 ways; six things in 720 ways; seven things in 5,040 ways; and so on in a progression increasing with enormous rapidity. Assuming, then, that at the centre F, certain points, a, b, c, d, e, are to be com- bined, not in this succession only, but in all possible suc- cessions, there will require 120 different links of connec- tion for this one group of five points only. These links, whether separate vesicles or less-differentiated portions of grey matter, must occupy a considerable space; and sup- posing they are aggregated near those pre-existing cells or links which they have to re-combine in various orders, there may result a protuberance from the centre F, as shown at G. If we suppose that instead of a group of five, a group of six is to have its members thus variously combined; or if instead of one group to be so dealt with, there are many; this lateral outgrowth may become relatively very large. And since its vesicles, or portions of grey matter, will be much more bulky than the fibres running from them to the members of groups which they combine, there may be expected to arise, as at H, a lateral centre attached to the original centre, F, by a pedicle of fibres. Of course these diagrams and numbers are intended to convey nothing but a general idea of the principle of com- position of nerve centres—not to represent any actual com- position. It would be an absurd assumption that among a number of points in the body, there have to be formed as many unlike groups as are theoretically possible; and it is not to be supposed that the members of any group need ever to be combined in as many different orders as they might be combined. Bnt while, on the one hand, the above description greatly over-states the accumulation of nerve- vesicles, or their equivalents, implied by such correlations as are actually required among a given number of points in the
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