Rhetoric   

particular time or (5) place. As evidence of the want of kindness, we
may point out that a smaller service had been refused to the man in
need; or that the same service, or an equal or greater one, has been
given to his enemies; these facts show that the service in question
was not done for the sake of the person helped. Or we may point out
that the thing desired was worthless and that the helper knew it: no
one will admit that he is in need of what is worthless.
Part 8
So much for Kindness and Unkindness. Let us now consider Pity, asking
ourselves what things excite pity, and for what persons, and in what
states of our mind pity is felt. Pity may be defined as a feeling of
pain caused by the sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which
befalls one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to
befall ourselves or some friend of ours, and moreover to befall us
soon. In order to feel pity, we must obviously be capable of supposing
that some evil may happen to us or some friend of ours, and moreover
some such evil as is stated in our definition or is more or less of
that kind. It is therefore not felt by those completely ruined, who
suppose that no further evil can befall them, since the worst has
befallen them already; nor by those who imagine themselves immensely
fortunate-their feeling is rather presumptuous insolence, for when
they think they possess all the good things of life, it is clear that
the impossibility of evil befalling them will be included, this being
one of the good things in 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