Experience teaches this. In infancy the ego, the personality, is
consciously realized in one person sooner, in another later. In the
different ages of life, also, the personality possesses a different
content. The deeper cause for the mutual reference of all our manifold
ideas to each other and for their union in a single point, as it were,
may be found in the _simplicity of the soul_, which constrains into
unity all things that are not dissociated by hindrance or
contradiction. The soul, therefore, in the face of the varied
influences produced by contact with nature and society, is active in
concentrating its ideas, so that with mental soundness as a basis, the
ego, once formed, in spite of all the transitions through which it may
pass, still remains the same."
There is then a natural _tendency_ of the mind _to unify_ all its
ideas, feelings, incentives. On the other hand the knowledge and
experiences of life are so varied and seemingly contradictory that a
young person, if left to himself or if subjected to a wrong schooling,
will seldom work his way to harmony and unity. In spite of the fact
that the soul is a simple unit and tends naturally to unify all its
contents, the common experience of life discovers in it unconnected and
even antagonistic thought and knowledge-centers.
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