Further, love is like activity, being loved like passivity; and
loving and its concomitants are attributes of those who are the more
active.
Again, all men love more what they have won by labour; e.g. those
who have made their money love it more than those who have inherited
it; and to be well treated seems to involve no labour, while to
treat others well is a laborious task. These are the reasons, too, why
mothers are fonder of their children than fathers; bringing them
into the world costs them more pains, and they know better that the
children are their own. This last point, too, would seem to apply to
benefactors.
8
The question is also debated, whether a man should love himself
most, or some one else. People criticize those who love themselves
most, and call them self-lovers, using this as an epithet of disgrace,
and a bad man seems to do everything for his own sake, and the more so
the more wicked he is-and so men reproach him, for instance, with
doing nothing of his own accord-while the good man acts for honour's
sake, and the more so the better he is, and acts for his friend's
sake, and sacrifices his own interest.
But the facts clash with these arguments, and this is not
surprising. For men say that one ought to love best one's best friend,
and man's best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish
for his sake, even if no one is to know of it; and these attributes
are found most of all in a man's attitude towards himself, and so
are all the other attributes by which a friend is defined; for, as
we have said, it is from this relation that all the characteristics of
friendship have extended to our neighbours.
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