Let us now pass to another case of compound representation, where the illusory element is still more striking. I refer to the idea of self which each of us habitually carries about with him. Every man's opinion of himself, as a whole, is a very complex mental product, in which facts known by introspection no doubt play a part, but probably only a very subordinate part. It is obvious, from what has been said about the structure of our habitual representations of other individuals, that our ordinary representation of ourselves will be tinged with that mass of error which we have found to be connected with single acts of introspection, recollections of past personal experience, and illusory single expectations of future personal experiences. How large an opening for erroneous conviction here presents itself can only be understood by a reference to certain deeply fixed impulses and feelings connected with, the very consciousness of self, and favouring what I have marked off as active illusion. I shall try to show very briefly that each man's intuitive persuasion of his own powers, gifts, or importance—in brief, of his own particular value, contains, from the first, a palpable ingredient of active illusion.
Most persons, one supposes, have with more or less distinct consciousness framed a notion of their own value, if not to the world generally, at least to themselves. And this notion, however undefined it may be, is held to with a singular tenacity of belief. The greater part of mankind, indeed, seem never to entertain the question whether they really possess points of excellence. They assume it as a matter perfectly self-evident, and appear to believe in their vaguely conceived worth on the same immediate testimony of consciousness by which they assure themselves of their personal existence. Indeed, the conviction of personal consequence may be said to be a constant factor in most men's consciousness. However restrained by the rules of polite intercourse, it betrays its existence and its energy in innumerable ways. It displays itself most triumphantly when the mind is suddenly isolated from other minds, when other men unite in heaping neglect and contempt on the believer's head. In these moments he proves an almost heroic strength of confidence, believing in himself and in his claims to careful consideration when all his acquaintance are practically avowing their disbelief.
The intensity of this belief in personal value may be observed in very different forms. The young woman who, quite independently of others' opinion, and even in defiance of it, cherishes a conviction that her external attractions have a considerable value; the young man who, in the face of general indifference, persists in his habit of voluble talk on the supposition that he is conferring on his fellow-creatures the fruits of profound wisdom; and the man of years whose opinion of his own social importance and moral worth is quite disproportionate to the estimation which others form of his claims—these alike illustrate the force and pertinacity of the belief.
There are, no doubt, many exceptions to this form of self-appreciation. In certain robust minds, but little given to self-reflection, the idea of personal value rarely occurs. And then there are timid, sensitive natures that betray a tendency to self-distrust of all kinds, and to an undue depreciation of personal merit. Yet even here traces of an impulse to think well of self will appear to the attentive eye, and one can generally recognize that this impulse is only kept down by some other stronger force, as, for example, extreme sensitiveness to the judgment of others, great conscientiousness, and so on. And however this be, it will be allowed that the average man rates himself highly.
It is to be noticed that this persuasion of personal value or excellence is, in common, very vague. A man may have a general sense of his own importance without in the least being able to say wherein exactly his superiority lies. Or, to put it another way, he may have a strong conviction that he stands high in the scale of morally deserving persons, and yet be unable to define his position more nearly. Commonly, the conviction seems to be only definable as an assurance of a superlative of which the positive and comparative are suppressed. At most, his idea of his moral altitude resolves itself into the proposition, "I am a good deal better than Mr. A. or Mr. B." Now, it is plain that in these intuitive judgments on his own excellence, the man is making an assertion with respect, not only to inner subjective feelings which he only can be supposed to know immediately, but also to external objective facts which are patent to others, namely, to certain active tendencies and capabilities, to the direction of external conduct in certain lines.[143] Hence, if the assertion is erroneous, it will be in plain contradiction to others' perceptions of his powers or moral endowments. And this is what we actually find. A man's self-esteem, in a large preponderance of cases, is plainly in excess of others' esteem of him. What the man conceives himself to be differs widely from what others conceive him to be.
"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us!"
Now, whence comes this large and approximately 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 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.