" From the moment of conception and still more after birth, there is an encroachment towards a future which is made from itself, under certain given conditions, and which is not the act of a donation of sense. Birth is not an act of constitution but the institution of a future. Reciprocally, institution resides in the same genus of Being as birth and is not, any more than birth, an act. "

― Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the Collège de France, 1954-1955