The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

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13
    There are three kinds of friendship, as we said at the outset of
our inquiry, and in respect of each some are friends on an equality
and others by virtue of a superiority (for not only can equally
good men become friends but a better man can make friends with a
worse, and similarly in friendships of pleasure or utility the
friends may be equal or unequal in the benefits they confer). This
being so, equals must effect the required equalization on a basis
of equality in love and in all other respects, while unequals must
render what is in proportion to their superiority or inferiority.
Complaints and reproaches arise either only or chiefly in the
friendship of utility, and this is only to be expected. For those
who are friends on the ground of virtue are anxious to do well by
each other (since that is a mark of virtue and of friendship), and
between men who are emulating each other in this there cannot be
complaints or quarrels; no one is offended by a man who loves him
and does well by him-if he is a person of nice feeling he takes his
revenge by doing well by the other. And the man who excels the
other in the services he renders will not complain of his friend,
since he gets what he aims at; for each man desires what is good.
Nor do complaints arise much even in friendships of pleasure; for
both get at the same time what they desire, if they enjoy spending
their time together; and even a man who complained of another for
not affording him pleasure would seem ridiculous, since it is in
his power not to spend his days with him.
    But the friendship of utility is full of complaints; for as they
use each other for their own interests they always want to get the
better of the bargain, and think they have got less than they
should, and blame their partners because they do not get all they
‘want and deserve’; and those who do well by others cannot help
them as much as those whom they benefit want.
    Now it seems that, as justice is of two kinds, one unwritten and
the other legal, one kind of friendship of utility is moral and the
other legal. And so complaints arise most of all when men do not
dissolve the relation in the spirit of the same type of friendship
in which they contracted it. The legal type is that which is on
fixed terms; its purely commercial variety is on the basis of
immediate payment, while the more liberal variety allows time but
stipulates for a definite quid pro quo. In this variety the debt is
clear and not ambiguous, but in the postponement it contains an
element of friendliness; and so some states do not allow suits
arising out of such agreements, but think men who have bargained on
a basis of credit ought to accept the consequences. The moral type
is not on fixed terms; it makes a gift, or does whatever it does,
as to a friend; but one expects to receive as much or more, as
having not given but lent; and if a man is worse off when the
relation is dissolved than he was when it was contracted he will
complain. This happens because all or most men, while they wish for
what is noble, choose what is advantageous; now it is noble to do
well by another without a view to repayment, but it is the
receiving of benefits that is advantageous. Therefore if we can we
should return the equivalent of what we have received (for we must
not make a man our friend against his will; we must recognize that
we were mistaken at the first and took a benefit from a person we
should not have taken it from-since it was not from a friend, nor
from one who did it just for the sake of acting so-and we must
settle up just as if we had been benefited on fixed terms). Indeed,
one would agree to repay if one could (if one could not, even the
giver would not have expected one to do so); therefore if it is
possible we must repay. But at the outset we must consider the man
by whom we are being benefited and on what terms he is acting, in
order that we may accept the benefit on these terms, or else
decline it.
    It is disputable whether we ought to measure a service by its
utility to the receiver and make the return with a view to that, or
by the benevolence of the giver. For those who have received say
they have received from their benefactors what meant little to the
latter and what they might have got from others-minimizing the
service; while the givers, on the contrary, say it was the biggest
thing they had, and what could not have been got from others, and
that it was given in