The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

he would be loved by it if it came alive; and
this happens perhaps most of all with poets; for they have an
excessive love for their own poems, doting on them as if they were
their children. This is what the position of benefactors is like;
for that which they have treated well is their handiwork, and
therefore they love this more than the handiwork does its maker.
The cause of this is that existence is to all men a thing to be
chosen and loved, and that we exist by virtue of activity (i.e. by
living and acting), and that the handiwork is in a sense, the
producer in activity; he loves his handiwork, therefore, because he
loves existence. And this is rooted in the nature of things; for
what he is in potentiality, his handiwork manifests in
activity.
    At the same time to the benefactor that is noble which depends
on his action, so that he delights in the object of his action,
whereas to the patient there is nothing noble in the agent, but at
most something advantageous, and this is less pleasant and lovable.
What is pleasant is the activity of the present, the hope of the
future, the memory of the past; but most pleasant is that which
depends on activity, and similarly this is most lovable. Now for a
man who has made something his work remains (for the noble is
lasting), but for the person acted on the utility passes away. And
the memory of noble things is pleasant, but that of useful things
is not likely to be pleasant, or is less so; though the reverse
seems true of expectation.
    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.
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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.
All the proverbs, too, agree with this, e.g. ‘a single soul’, and
‘what friends have is common property’, and ‘friendship is
equality’, and ‘charity begins at home’; for all these marks will
be found most in a man’s relation to himself; he is his own best
friend and therefore ought to love himself best. It is therefore a
reasonable question, which of the two views we should follow; for
both are plausible.
    Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other and
determine how far and in what respects each view is right. Now if
we grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase ‘lover of
self’, the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one
of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves
the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures; for
these are what most people desire, and busy themselves about as
though they were the best of all things, which is the reason, too,
why they become objects of competition. So those who are grasping
with regard to these things gratify their appetites and in general
their feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and most men
are of this nature (which is the reason why the epithet has come to
be used as it is-it takes its meaning from the prevailing type