Book 2
7.6
And the action must be considered in reference to all the categories; for if there is a favor it is so because of substance, quantity, quality, time, or place.The other five categories in Aristotle's list are: relation, position, possession, activity, passivity. And it denotes lack of goodwill, if persons have not rendered a smaller service,Because in that case their motives in rendering the greater service cannot be disinterested. or if they have rendered similar, equal, or greater services to our enemies; for it is evident that they do not act for our sake in this case either. Or if the service was insignificant, and rendered by one who knew it; for no one admits that he has need of what is insignificant.
8.1
Let this suffice for benevolence and the opposite. We will now state what things and persons excite pity, and the state of mind of those who feel it.
8.2
Let pity then be a kind of pain excited by the sight of evil, deadly or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it; an evil which one might expect to come upon himself or one of his friends, and when it seems near. For it is evident that one who is likely to feel pity must be such as to think that he, or one of his friends, is liable to suffer some evil, and such an evil as has been stated in the definition, or one similar, or nearly similar.
8.3
Wherefore neither those who are utterly ruined, are capable of pity, for they think they have nothing more to suffer, since they have exhausted suffering; nor those who think themselves supremely fortunate, who rather are insolent. For if they think that all good things are theirs, it is clear that they think that they cannot possibly suffer evil, and this is one of the good things.
8.4
Now those persons who think they are likely to suffer are those who have already suffered and escaped; the advanced in age, by reason of their wisdom and experience; and the weak, and those who are rather more timid; and the educated, for they reckon rightly;
