It's one of those gray days...

"Even while each living thing is said to be alive and to be the same -- as a person is said to be the same from childhood till he turns into an old man-- even then he never consists of the same things, though he is called the same, but he is always being renewed and in other respects passing away, in his hair and flesh and bones and blood and his entire body. And it's not just in his body but in his soul too, for none of his manners, customs, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, or fears ever remains the same, but some are coming to be in him while while others are passing away. And what is still far stranger than that is that not only does on branch of knowledge come to be in us while and pass away and that we are never the same even in respect of our knowledge, but that each single piece of knowledge has the same fate. For what we call studying exists because knowledge is leaving us, because forgetting is the departure of knowledge while studying puts back a fresh memory in place of what went away, thereby preserving a piece of knowledge so that it seems to be the same. And in that way everything mortal is preserved, not like the divine, by always being the same in every way, but because what is departing and aging leaves behind something new, something such as it had been. By this device what is mortal shares in immortality, whether it is a body or anything else, while the immortal has another way. So don't be surprised if everything naturally values its own offspring, because it is for the sake of immortality that everything shows this zeal, which is Love."