"Today Nature looms larger than ever and includes more fully than ever ourselves. It is, if you will, a machine, but it is a partly mentalized machine, and in virtue of including ourselves it is a machine with human qualities of mind. It is a running stream of energy—mental and physical—and unlike man-made machines it is actuated by emotions, fears and hopes, dislikes and love. It bids fair to be master of this our planet—'it looks before and after'. To what or to whom does it owe this eminent and seemingly unique status? It answers unhesitatingly that it owes it to itself. But to the semi-divine assembly which looks on, that answer would be impertinent but for its saving ignorance. We may suppose that if they hear it the stars smile. Human thought is left wondering. What is it all for? Man is too small and too perishable to be the object of this whole. A counsel is 'let us endure and be quiet'—a counsel which is the easier to follow because it seems all that there is for us to do, at least at the present moment."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
People from LondonUniversity of Oxford facultyMedical scientistsPhysicians from EnglandNobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
The "semi-divine assembly" and the smiling "stars" allude to the intelligences that purportedly moved the celestial spheres and the celestial bodies in classical and medieval cosmology. Sherrington discusses them briefly in Ch. 1 and at greater length in Ch. 2.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Scott_Sherrington
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Charles Scott Sherrington
1857 – 1952
19 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Charles Scott Sherrington →
Related Quotes
"Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground of emotion, under impulsion from…"
"It is difficult to get a hearing from busy men for even a great new truth."
"The brain is a mystery—it has been—and still will be. Not that we do not know many facts about it. The facts we know …"
"Natural science is a branch of knowledge by general consent not primarily based on the a priori. It […] observes and …"
"The scientific journey has no end. It has only halting places—points at which the traveller can look round and survey."
"The 'motion' of an energy-system is its 'behaviour'. Various types of organization of system produce on that basis va…"
"The gap between 'the State' and 'a machine' is not so wide."
"The influence of mind on the doings of life makes mind an effective contribution to life. We can seize then how mind …"
"[M]an's life of all lives is the most completely and fully bound to earth because life's experience, wholly earthly, …"
"In the great head-end which has been mostly darkness springs up myriads of twinkling stationary lights and myriads of…"