Mencius said: "People love all aspects of themselves equally.  Loving them all equally, people nurture them all equally.  When there isn't an inch of their flesh that they don't love, there isn't an inch they don't nurture.  There's only one way to know if people are good or evil: look at the choices they make.  We each contain precious and worthless, great and small.  Never injure the great for the sake of the small, or the precious for the sake of the worthless.  Small people nurture what is small in them; great people nurture what is great in them.

"Consider a gardener who nurtures the scraggly sour-plum and date-bramble, but neglects the magnificent wu-t'ung and chia – that's a worthless gardener indeed.  If you neglect shoulder and back to nurture a finger, and don't even realize what you're doing, you're nothing but a reckless wolf.  And if you're obsessed with food and drink, you'll be scorned as worthless because you're nurturing the small and neglecting the great.  Even if you neglect nothing else in your obsession with food and drink, you've let your mouth and belly become so much more than just another inch of flesh." (11.14)