 The fact that Harris’s cruelty is an intelligible response to his circumstances gives a foothold not only for sympathy, but for the thought that if I had been subjected to such circumstances, I might well have become as vile. What is unsettling is the thought that one’s moral self is such a fragile thing. One tends to think of one’s moral sensibilities as going deeper than that (though it is not clear what this means). This thought induces not only an ontological shudder, but a sense of equality with the other: I too am a potential sinner (Watson 1987, as reprinted in Watson 2004: 245).