"Where's her mommy?"

A couple of days ago, Helena Iara and I were playing in the living room, when she found a tiny rag doll.  It's a very simple thing, just arms and legs and head and eyes, and Rita bought it when we were in Chiapas, Mexico, five or six years ago.  But what matters to the story here is that the baby is part of a pair: there is also a mommy doll, and they are always together (they were first sewn together, but as happens with curious babies, Helena seems to have picked them apart).

So what did Helena do, upon finding the doll?  A worried expression came over her face, and she began to say "Mommy?  Mommy?" but not with the sort of voice she uses to call Rita.  She walked around the room, looking in the toy box, on the sofa, other places where the mommy doll might be.  She only came to smile again when she found the other doll.

Who knows how many ethical systems philosophers have thought up over the thousands of years since Aristotle talked about finding virtue in the middle between two extremes.  Kant and the duty to the moral law, Mill's utility, Levinas and the face...  But I'd put a good bet on the first step of any ethical system being empathy, feeling for a baby who has lost his mommy.  Maybe both the baby and the mommy are just cloth, but it means something.