Smith's China-earthquake passage, contrary to its common citation as evidence of pure selfishness, argues that what restrains a man from sacrificing a hundred million strangers to save his own little finger is not the feeble spark of benevolence but a stronger force—reason, principle, conscience, the man within the breast—and that what prompts genuinely noble acts is not love of mankind but love of what is honorable and noble in our own character, a deliberate inversion of the Wealth of Nations' butcher-baker passage.