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left the room for a moment. The researchers found that all of the one- and two-year-olds “understand the prohibition as cancelled at the moment that the contact with the adult is broken, and play with the toy.” But when the adult suddenly returns, 60percent of the sixteen-month-olds and 100 percent of the eighteen-month-olds “show the greatest embarrassment, blush, and turn to the adult with a frightened expression.” The twenty-one-month-olds “attempted to make good what happened by returning the toy quickly to its place.” The fear showed by the children might have been devoid of moral content, but the embarrassment—the blushing!—shows that something else was going on as well. Such reflexive displays of guilt were replaced with explicit acts of moral self-justification as the children got older: the two-year-olds in the study attempted to “motivate the disobedience, for example, by claiming the toy as their own.”
    As we have seen, babies are sensitive to the good and bad acts of others long before they are capable of doing anything good or bad themselves. It seems likely, then, that the “moral sense” is first extended to others and then at some later point in development turns inward. At this point, children come to see themselves as moral agents, and this recognition manifests itself through guilt, shame, and pride.
    W E ’ VE seen certain limitations on children’s empathy and compassion, but this should not distract us from how impressive it is to find such moral behavior and sentiments in creatures so young. Samuel Johnson said it best (in a very different context): “It’s like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
    But our natural compassion would have been no surprise to Darwin, or to many of the scientists, philosophers,and theologians who preceded him. It was a conclusion eloquently expressed by one of the heroes of this book. Adam Smith is best known for his 1776 work, The Wealth of Nations , which makes the case that prosperity can emerge from the interactions of selfish agents. But he never believed that people were wholly self-interested beings; he was exquisitely sensitive tothe psychological pull of compassion. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments , he begins with three sentences that make the point with eloquence and force:
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility.

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    F AIRNESS , S TATUS ,
AND P UNISHMENT
    The comedian Louis C.K. has a routine in which he talks about his daughter’s understanding of fairness. He begins, “My five-year-old, the other day, one of her toys broke, and she demanded that I break her sister’s toy to make it fair.” This would make the sisters equal , but the joke is that something here doesn’t feel right: “And I did. I was like crying. And I look at her. She’s got this creepy smile on her face.”
    Other intuitions about fairness are simpler. Imagine you have two toys and two children, and you give both toys to one child. If the other child is old enough to speak, she will object. She might say, “That’s not fair!” and she’d be correct. An even split would maximize the overall happiness of the children—give each child one toy and they’re both happy; divide them unevenly, and the child who gets