The self is not so much linked to its ancestors, it is not so much the product, and merely the product, of all that, but rather, in the strictest sense of the word, the same thing as all that: the strict, direct continuation of it, just as the self aged fifty is the continuation of the self aged forty.
Erwin SchrodingerNature has no reverence towards life. Nature treats life as though it were the most valueless thing in the world.... Nature does not act by purposes.
Erwin Schrodinger