That our being should consist of two fundamental elements [physical and psychical] offers I suppose no greater inherent improbability than that it should rest on one only.
Charles Scott SherringtonThat a strong stimulus to such an afferent nerve, exciting most or all of its fibres, should in regard to a given muscle develop inhibition and excitation concurrently is not surprising.
Charles Scott SherringtonIf we denote excitation as an end-effect by the sign plus (+), and inhibition as end-effect by the sign minus (-), such a reflex as the scratch-reflex can be termed a reflex of double-sign, for it develops excitatory end-effect and then inhibitory end-effect even during the duration of the exciting stimulus.
Charles Scott SherringtonEach waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, comedy, farce, or tragedy, by a dramatis personae, the 'self', and so it will be until the curtain drops.
Charles Scott SherringtonThis integrative action in virtue of which the nervous system unifies from separate organs an animal possessing solidarity, an individual, is the problem before us.
Charles Scott SherringtonThe brain seems a thoroughfare for nerve-action passing its way to the motor animal. It has been remarked that Life's aim is an act not a thought. To-day the dictum must be modified to admit that, often, to refrain from an act is no less an act than to commit one, because inhibition is coequally with excitation a nervous activity.
Charles Scott Sherrington