[23] Equite does not change justice: but, always taking equite for the base, it superadds esteem, and thereby forms in man a third degree of sociability.

Equite makes it at once our duty and our pleasure to aid the weak who have need of us, and to make them our equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honor, without enslaving ourselves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends, and equals, for that which we receive from them, even by right of exchange.

Equite is sociability raised to its ideal by reason and justice; its commonest manifestation is URBANITY or POLITENESS, which, among certain nations, sums up in a single word nearly all the social duties.
It is the just distribution of social sympathy and universal love.
Now, this feeling is unknown among the beasts, who love and cling to each other, and show their preferences, but who cannot conceive of esteem, and who are incapable of generosity, admiration, or politeness.
This feeling does not spring from intelligence, which calculates, computes, and balances, but does not love; which sees, but does not feel.

As justice is the product of social instinct and reflection combined, so equite is a product of justice and taste combined--that is, of our powers of judging and of idealizing.
This product--the third and last degree of human sociability--is determined by our complex mode of association; in which inequality, or rather the divergence of faculties, and the speciality of functions--tending of themselves to isolate laborers--demand a more active sociability.
That is why the force which oppresses while protecting is execrable; why the silly ignorance which views with the same eye the marvels of art, and the products of the rudest industry, excites unutterable contempt; why proud mediocrity, which glories in saying, "I have paid you--I owe you nothing," is especially odious.
SOCIABILITY, JUSTICE, EQUITE--such, in its triplicity, is the exact definition of the instinctive faculty which leads us into communication with our fellows, and whose physical manifestation is expressed by the formula: EQUALITY IN NATURAL WEALTH, AND THE PRODUCTS OF LABOR.
These three degrees of sociability support and imply each other.
Equite cannot exist without justice; society without justice is a solecism.

If, in order to reward talent, I take from one to give to another, in unjustly stripping the first, I do not esteem his talent as I ought; if, in society, I award more to myself than to my associate, we are not really associated.