Book 9
6
Again, loving seems to be an active experience, being loved a passive one; hence affection and the various forms of friendly feeling are naturally found in the more active party to the relationship.
7
Again, everybody loves a thing more if it has cost him trouble: for instance those who have made money love money more than those who have inherited it. Now to receive a benefit seems to involve no labor, but to confer one is an effort. (This is why mothers love their children more than fathers, because parenthood costs the mother more trouble [and the mother is more certain that the child is her own].This seems an irrelevant insertion from 8.12.2 f.) This also then would seem to be a characteristic of benefactors.
1
The question is also raised whether one ought to love oneself or someone else most. We censure those who put themselves first, and lover of self is used as a term of reproach. And it is thought that a bad man considers himself in all he does, and the more so the worse he is—so it is a complaint against him for instance that he never does a thing unless you make him —whereas a good man acts from a sense of what is noble, and the better he is the more he so acts, and he considers his friend’s interest, disregarding his own.
