So conversely, at death it seems to re-emerge into no mind. But it seems to come from nothing and return to nothing. The devolution into nothing seems as difficult as the evolution out of nothing. We really have two problems here. A determinism in the conditions of vital phenomena should be one of the axioms of experimenting physicians.
Determinism thus becomes the foundation of all scientific progress and criticism.
Sherrington grew up in this intellectual environment and was, at least in his younger days, perhaps largely unaware of the fog it created. He accepted it and indeed thrived upon it. Yet its limitations must later have become apparent to him. Perhaps Sherrington could not even admit the existence of a non-material world, but he seems in the end to have come very close to the idea that mind had some transcendent value. This appears to be the implication of a statement he made to Sir John Eccles five days before he died.