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… - Charles Scott Sherrington

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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.