The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

skill;
and similarly whether one should render a service by preference to
a friend or to a good man, and should show gratitude to a
benefactor or oblige a friend, if one cannot do both.
    All such questions are hard, are they not, to decide with
precision? For they admit of many variations of all sorts in
respect both of the magnitude of the service and of its nobility
necessity. But that we should not give the preference in all things
to the same person is plain enough; and we must for the most part
return benefits rather than oblige friends, as we must pay back a
loan to a creditor rather than make one to a friend. But perhaps
even this is not always true; e.g. should a man who has been
ransomed out of the hands of brigands ransom his ransomer in
return, whoever he may be (or pay him if he has not been captured
but demands payment) or should he ransom his father? It would seem
that he should ransom his father in preference even to himself. As
we have said, then, generally the debt should be paid, but if the
gift is exceedingly noble or exceedingly necessary, one should
defer to these considerations. For sometimes it is not even fair to
return the equivalent of what one has received, when the one man
has done a service to one whom he knows to be good, while the other
makes a return to one whom he believes to be bad. For that matter,
one should sometimes not lend in return to one who has lent to
oneself; for the one person lent to a good man, expecting to
recover his loan, while the other has no hope of recovering from
one who is believed to be bad. Therefore if the facts really are
so, the demand is not fair; and if they are not, but people think
they are, they would be held to be doing nothing strange in
refusing. As we have often pointed out, then, discussions about
feelings and actions have just as much definiteness as their
subject-matter.
    That we should not make the same return to every one, nor give a
father the preference in everything, as one does not sacrifice
everything to Zeus, is plain enough; but since we ought to render
different things to parents, brothers, comrades, and benefactors,
we ought to render to each class what is appropriate and becoming.
And this is what people seem in fact to do; to marriages they
invite their kinsfolk; for these have a part in the family and
therefore in the doings that affect the family; and at funerals
also they think that kinsfolk, before all others, should meet, for
the same reason. And it would be thought that in the matter of food
we should help our parents before all others, since we owe our own
nourishment to them, and it is more honourable to help in this
respect the authors of our being even before ourselves; and honour
too one should give to one’s parents as one does to the gods, but
not any and every honour; for that matter one should not give the
same honour to one’s father and one’s mother, nor again should one
give them the honour due to a philosopher or to a general, but the
honour due to a father, or again to a mother. To all older persons,
too, one should give honour appropriate to their age, by rising to
receive them and finding seats for them and so on; while to
comrades and brothers one should allow freedom of speech and common
use of all things. To kinsmen, too, and fellow-tribesmen and
fellow-citizens and to every other class one should always try to
assign what is appropriate, and to compare the claims of each class
with respect to nearness of relation and to virtue or usefulness.
The comparison is easier when the persons belong to the same class,
and more laborious when they are different. Yet we must not on that
account shrink from the task, but decide the question as best we
can.
<
    div class="section" title="3">
3
    Another question that arises is whether friendships should or
should not be broken off when the other party does not remain the
same. Perhaps we may say that there is nothing strange in breaking
off a friendship based on utility or pleasure, when our friends no
longer have these attributes. For it was of these attributes that
we were the friends; and when these have failed it is reasonable to
love no longer. But one might complain of another if, when he loved
us for our usefulness or pleasantness, he pretended to love us for
our character. For, as we said at the outset, most differences
arise between friends when they are not friends in the spirit in
which they think they are. So when a man has deceived himself and
has thought