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[4]

Differences arise when the friends do not obtain what they desire, but something else; for not to get what you want is almost the same as not to get anything at all. For instance, there is the story of the man who hired a harper, and promised that the better he played the more he would pay him; but next morning, when the harper asked him to fulfil his promise, he said that he had already paid for the pleasure he had received by the pleasure he had given.1 This would have been all right if both had wanted pleasure; but when one wants amusement and the other gain, and one gets what he wants and the other does not, it would not be a fair bargain; for it is the thing that a man happens to need that he sets his heart on, and only to get that is he ready to give what he does.

1 Plutarch, Plut. De Alexandri fortuna 2.1, tells the story of the tyrant Dionysius, who promised the musician a talent （there seems no particular point in the sliding scale of payment which Aristotle's version introduces） , but next day told him that he had already been sufficiently paid by the pleasure of anticipation.

Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.

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