This view which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely 'logical'. In fact it is simply shallow: the confused center is right to reject it. The most elementary form of moral reasoning -- the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl -- is to weigh others' interests against one's own. This in turn requires sympathy and imagination: without which there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy. When that happens, it is not a mistake: it is mankind's instinct for moral reasoning in action, an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.