mately uniform discrepancy
between our self-esteem and others' esteem of us? By trying to answer
this question we shall come to understand still better the processes by
which the most powerful forms of illusion are generated.

It is, I think, a matter of every-day observation that children manifest
an apparently instinctive disposition to magnify self as soon as the
vaguest idea of self is reached. It is very hard to define this feeling
more precisely than by terming it a rudimentary sense of personal
importance. It may show itself in very different ways, taking now a more
active form, as an impulse of self-assertion, and a desire to enforce
one's own will to the suppression of others' wills, and at another time
wearing the appearance of a passive emotion, an elementary form of
_amour propre_. And it is this feeling which forms the germ of the
self-estimation of adults. For in truth all attribution of value
involves an element of feeling, as respect, and of active desire, and
the ascription of value to one's self is in its simplest form merely the
expression of this state of mind.

But how is it, it may be asked, that this feeling shows itself
instinctively as soon as the idea of self begins to arise in
consciousness? The answer to this question is to be found, I imagine, in
the general laws of mental development. All practical judgments like
that of self-estimation are based on some feeling which is developed
before it; and, again, the feeling itself is based on some instinctive
action which, in like manner, is earlier than the feeling. Thus, for
example, an Englishman's judgment that his native country is of
paramount value springs out of a long-existent sentiment of patriotism,
which sentiment again may be regarded as having slowly grown up about
the half-blindly followed habit of defending and furthering the
interests of one's nation or tribe. In a similar way, one suspects, the
feeling of personal worth, with its accompanying judgment, is a product
of a long process of instinctive action.

What this action is it is scarcely necessary to remind the reader. Every
living organism strives, or acts as if it consciously strove, to
maintain its life and promote its well-being. The actions of plants are
clearly related to the needs of a prosperous existence, individual first
and serial afterwards. The movements of the lower animals have the same
end. Thus, on the supposition that man has been slowly evolved from
lower f