The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

question. Those who think evil may befall them are such as have
already had it befall them and have safely escaped from it; elderly
men, owing to their good sense and their experience; weak men,
especially men inclined to cowardice; and also educated people,
since these can take long views. Also those who have parents
living, or children, or wives; for these are our own, and the evils
mentioned above may easily befall them. And those who neither moved
by any courageous emotion such as anger or confidence (these
emotions take no account of the future), nor by a disposition to
presumptuous insolence (insolent men, too, take no account of the
possibility that something evil will happen to them), nor yet by
great fear (panic-stricken people do not feel pity, because they
are taken up with what is happening to themselves); only those feel
pity who are between these two extremes. In order to feel pity we
must also believe in the goodness of at least some people; if you
think nobody good, you will believe that everybody deserves evil
fortune. And, generally, we feel pity whenever we are in the
condition of remembering that similar misfortunes have happened to
us or ours, or expecting them to happen in the future.
    So much for the mental conditions under which we feel pity. What
we pity is stated clearly in the definition. All unpleasant and
painful things excite pity if they tend to destroy pain and
annihilate; and all such evils as are due to chance, if they are
serious. The painful and destructive evils are: death in its
various forms, bodily injuries and afflictions, old age, diseases,
lack of food. The evils due to chance are: friendlessness, scarcity
of friends (it is a pitiful thing to be torn away from friends and
companions), deformity, weakness, mutilation; evil coming from a
source from which good ought to have come; and the frequent
repetition of such misfortunes. Also the coming of good when the
worst has happened: e.g. the arrival of the Great King’s gifts for
Diopeithes after his death. Also that either no good should have
befallen a man at all, or that he should not be able to enjoy it
when it has.
    The grounds, then, on which we feel pity are these or like
these. The people we pity are: those whom we know, if only they are
not very closely related to us-in that case we feel about them as
if we were in danger ourselves. For this reason Amasis did not
weep, they say, at the sight of his son being led to death, but did
weep when he saw his friend begging: the latter sight was pitiful,
the former terrible, and the terrible is different from the
pitiful; it tends to cast out pity, and often helps to produce the
opposite of pity. Again, we feel pity when the danger is near
ourselves. Also we pity those who are like us in age, character,
disposition, social standing, or birth; for in all these cases it
appears more likely that the same misfortune may befall us also.
Here too we have to remember the general principle that what we
fear for ourselves excites our pity when it happens to others.
Further, since it is when the sufferings of others are close to us
that they excite our pity (we cannot remember what disasters
happened a hundred centuries ago, nor look forward to what will
happen a hundred centuries hereafter, and therefore feel little
pity, if any, for such things): it follows that those who heighten
the effect of their words with suitable gestures, tones, dress, and
dramatic action generally, are especially successful in exciting
pity: they thus put the disasters before our eyes, and make them
seem close to us, just coming or just past. Anything that has just
happened, or is going to happen soon, is particularly piteous: so
too therefore are the tokens and the actions of sufferers-the
garments and the like of those who have already suffered; the words
and the like of those actually suffering-of those, for instance,
who are on the point of death. Most piteous of all is it when, in
such times of trial, the victims are persons of noble character:
whenever they are so, our pity is especially excited, because their
innocence, as well as the setting of their misfortunes before our
eyes, makes their misfortunes seem close to ourselves.
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    Most directly opposed to pity is the feeling called Indignation.
Pain at unmerited good fortune is, in one sense, opposite to pain
at unmerited bad fortune, and is due to the same moral qualities.
Both feelings are associated with good moral character; it is our
duty both to