Most men however, because they love honor, seem to be more desirous of receiving than of bestowing affection. Hence most men like flattery, for a flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, * i.e., the party to the friendship who gets more than he gives, and redresses the balance by repaying more affection or esteem than he receives. or pretends to be so, and to love you more than you love him; but to be loved is felt to be nearly the same as to be honored, which most people covet.
They do not however appear to value honor for its own sake, but for something incidental to it. Most people like receiving honor from men of high station, because they hope for something from them: they think that if they want something, the great man will be able to give it them; so they enjoy being honored by him as a token of benefits to come. Those on the other hand who covet being honored by good men, and by persons who know them, do so from a desire to confirm their own opinion of themselves; so * Or possibly ‘so what they really enjoy is being assured,’ etc. these like honor because they are assured of their worth by their confidence in the judgement of those who assert it. Affection on the other hand men like for its own sake; from which we infer that it is more valuable than honor, and that friendship is desirable in itself.
But in its essence friendship seems to consist more in giving than in receiving affection: witness the pleasure that mothers take in loving their children. Some mothers put their infants out to nurse, and though knowing and loving them, do not ask to be loved by them in return, if it be impossible to have this as well, but are content if they see them prospering; they retain their own love for them even though the children, not knowing them, cannot render them any part of what is due to a mother.
As then friendship consists more especially in bestowing affection, and as we praise men for loving their friends, affection seems to be the mark of a good friend. Hence it is friends that love each other as each deserves who continue friends and whose friendship is lasting.
Also it is by rendering affection in proportion to desert that friends who are not equals may approach most nearly to true friendship, since this will make them equal. Amity consists in equality and similarity, especially the similarity of those who are alike in virtue; for being true to themselves, these also remain true to one another, and neither request nor render services that are morally degrading. Indeed they may be said actually to restrain each other from evil: since good men neither err themselves nor permit their friends to err. Bad men on the other hand have no constancy in friendship, for they do not even remain true to their own characters; but they can be friends for a short time, while they take pleasure in each other's wickedness.
The friendships of useful and pleasant people last longer, in fact as long as they give each other pleasure or benefit. It is friendship based on utility that seems most frequently to spring from opposites, for instance a friendship between a poor man and a rich one, or between an ignorant man and a learned; for a person desiring something which he happens to lack will give something else in return for it. One may bring under this class the friendship between a lover and the object of his affections, or between a plain person and a handsome one. This is why lovers sometimes appear ridiculous when they claim that their love should be equally reciprocated; no doubt if they are equally lovable this is a reasonable demand, but it is ridiculous if they have nothing attractive about them.
But perhaps there is no real attraction between opposites as such, but only accidentally, and what they actually desire is the mean between them （since this is the Good）; the dry for instance striving not to become wet, but to reach an intermediate state, and so with the hot, and everything else. Let us however dismiss this question, as being indeed somewhat foreign to our subject.