orms, it is clear that the instinct of self-promotion must be the
deepest and most ineradicable element of his nature, and it is this
instinct which directly underlies the rudimentary sentiment of
self-esteem of which we are now treating.

This instinct will appear, first of all, as the unreflecting organized
habit of seeking individual good, of aiming at individual happiness, and
so of pushing on the action of the individual will. This impulse shows
itself in distinct form as soon as the individual is brought into
competition with another similarly constituted being. It is the force
which displays itself in all opposition and hostility, and it tends to
limit and counteract the gregarious instincts of the race. In the next
place, as intelligence expands, this instinctive action becomes
conscious pursuit of an end, and at this stage the thing pursued
attracts to itself a sentiment. The individual now consciously desires
his own happiness as contrasted with that of others, knowingly aims at
enlarging his own sphere of action to the diminution of others' spheres.
Here we have the nascent sentiment of self-esteem, on which all later
judgments respecting individual importance are, in part at least,
founded.

Thus, we see that long before man had arrived at an idea of self there
had been growing up an emotional predisposition to think well of self.
And in this way we may understand how it is that this sentiment of
self-esteem shows itself immediately and instinctively in the child's
mind as soon as its unfolding consciousness is strong enough to grasp
the first rough idea of personal existence. Far down, so to speak, below
the surface of distinct consciousness, in the intricate formation of
ganglion-cell and nerve-fibre, the connections between the idea of self
and this emotion of esteem have been slowly woven through long ages of
animal development.

Here, then, we seem to have the key to the apparently paradoxical fact
that a man, with all his superior means of studying his own feelings,
commonly esteems himself, in certain respects at least, less accurately
than a good external observer would be capable of doing. In forming an
opinion of ourselves we are exposed to the full force of a powerful
impulse of feeling. This impulse, acting as a bias, enters more or less
distinctly into our single acts of introspection, into our attempts to
recall our past doings, into our insights into the meaning of others'
words and actions