Self-consciousness appears at first in the selfish or narrowly egoistic form of appetite and impulse. The intelligence which claims to mould and construe the world of objects—which, in Kant’s phrase, professes to give us nature—is implicitly the lord of that world. And that supremacy it carries out as appetite—as destruction. The self is but a bundle of wants—its supremacy over things is really subjection to them: the satisfaction of appetite is baffled by a new desire which leaves it as it was before. The development of self-consciousness to a more adequate shape is represented by Hegel as taking place through the social struggle for existence. Human beings, too, are in the first instance to the uninstructed appetite or the primitive self-consciousness (which is simply a succession of individual desires for satisfaction of natural want) only things,—adjectival to that self’s individual existence. To them, too, his primary relation is to appropriate and master them. Might precedes right. But the social struggle for existence forces him to recognise something other which is kindred to himself,—a limiting principle, another self which has to form an element in his calculations, not to be neglected. And gradually, we may suppose, the result is the division of humanity into two levels, a ruling lordly class, and a class of slaves,—a state of inequality in which each knows that his appetite is in some measure checked by a more or less permanent other. Lastly, perhaps soonest in the inferior order, there is fashioned the perception that its self-seeking in its isolated appetites is subject to an abiding authority, a continuing consciousness. There grows up a social self—a sense of general humanity and solidarity with other beings—a larger self with which each identifies himself, a common ground. Understanding was selfish intelligence: practical in the egoistic sense. In the altruistic or universal sense practical, a principle social and unifying character, intelligence is Reason.