his work on poetry, Aristotle also defines tragedy as a kind of imitative poetry that provokes pity and fear. David Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature (Sect. VII Of Compassion), argued that "pity is concern for ... the misery of others without any friendship...to occasion this concern." He continues that pity "is derived from the imagination." When one observes a person in misfortune, the observer initially imagines his sorrow, even though they may not feel the same. While "we blush for the conduct of those, who behave themselves foolishly before us; and that though they show no sense of shame, nor seem in the least conscious of their folly," Hume argues "that he is the more worthy of compassion the less sensible he is of his miserable condition." Jean-Jacques Rousseau had the following opinion of pity as opposed to love for others: "It is therefore certain that pity is a natural sentiment, which, by moderating in every individual the activity of self-love, contributes to the mutual preservation of the whole species. It is this pity which hurries us without reflection to the assistance of those we see in distress; it is this pity which, in a state of nature, stands for laws, for manners, for virtue, with this advantage, that no one is tempted to disobey her sweet and gentle voice: it is this pity which will always hinder a robust savage from plundering a feeble child, or infirm old man, of the subsistence they have acquired with pain and difficulty, if he has but the least prospect of providing for himself by any other means: it is this pity which, instead of that sublime maxim of argumentative justice, Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful, Consult your own happiness with as little prejudice as you can to that of others." Nietzsche pointed out that since all people to some degree value self-esteem and self-worth, pity can negatively affect any situation. Nietzsche considered his own sensitivity to pity a lifelong weakness; and condemned what he called "Schopenhauer's morality of pity...pity negates life". Medieval conceptions Geoffrey Chaucer wrote "pite renneth soone in gentil herte" at least 10 times in his works, across the Canterbury Tales and the Legend of Good Women. The word "pite" had entered Middle