who beats himself because he has done something which makes him angry
with himself.

In sharp contrast to this state of oneness of the child's soul, in
regard both to its own body and to the surrounding world, there stands
the separatedness of the adult's intellectual consciousness, severed
from both body and world. What happens to this part of the soul during
its transition from one condition to the other may be aptly described
by using a comparison from another sphere of natural phenomena. (Later
descriptions in this book will show that a comparison such as the one
used here is more than a mere external analogy.)

Let us think of water in which salt has been dissolved. In this state
the salt is one with its solvent; there is no visible distinction
between them. The situation changes when part of the salt crystallizes.
By this process the part of the salt substance concerned loses its
connexion with the liquid and contracts into individually outlined and
spatially defined pieces of solid matter. It thereby becomes optically
distinguishable from its environment.

Something similar happens to the soul within the region of the nervous
system. What keeps the soul in a state of unconsciousness as long as
the body, in childhood, is traversed by life throughout, and what
continues to keep it in this condition in the parts which remain alive
after the separation of the nerves, is the fact that in these parts -
to maintain the analogy - the soul is dissolved in the body. With the
growing independence of the nerves, the soul itself gains independence
from the body. At the same time it undergoes a process similar to
contraction whereby it becomes discernible to itself as an entity
distinguished from the surrounding world. In this way the soul is