Some primal instinct tells the parent, or the person down on their luck, than if we let it go -- the child's hand, or our dignity -- all is lost, and we'll never get it back. That's why, if you even bother to look, you'll sometimes see a bag lady pushing a shopping cart down the street, wearing a nice dress underneath her torn and tattered coat. Or she'll have a pretty plastic flower pinned to her beat-up old hat. The flower and the dress remind her that she's human, a real person. Dignity and compassion, they're all that separate us from the four-legged creatures operating only on survival instinct, the law of the jungle. Without them, we're all just animals.