The simple reason to exercise compassion is that you would want others to show compassion to you, it's a social contract.

The reason why kids are more narcisstic, as you say, is that they're further down the learning curve in terms of experiencing humanity. That's the same reason only children have a tendency to be more narcisstic as adults (sweeping generalization).

I can see why you'd say consciousness might be a prerequisite of compassion, but I can't see why you'd assume consciuosness isn't an evolved motivation or indeed one that goes back a long way - it's present in apes isn't it?. Evolutionary biology is not something I'm expert in at all though, so I await correction [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]