Sarah's post about lessons in ethics brought back an old memory.

It happened in a supermarket when I was about 5 years old, and it was one of those ostensibly innocuous incidents that makes an indelible impression on a child. Trailing behind my mother, who was pushing a cart with one hand and holding a list of things to purchase with the other, I reached into an open barrel of candy sold according to weight and took a single wrapped sweet. My mother caught me just as I was about to remove the cellophane wrapper and commanded me to return it at once.

"But Mummy, I only took one," I wheedled.

"And what if every person who shopped here took one candy?" she responded. "Think about how many that would be."

Years later, while taking a required undergraduate course in philosophy at Columbia, I wondered if Mom was a Kantian and didn't even know it.