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 forms, 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.