Between them, between that intellectual or spiritual order, those novel philosophic kings, and the productive class of the artists and artisans, moves the military order, as the sensitive armed conscience, the armed will, of the State, its executive power in the fullest sense of that term--a "standing army," as Plato supposes, recruited from a great hereditary caste born and bred to such functions, and certainly very different from the mere "militia" of actual Greek states, hastily summoned at need to military service from the fields and workshops. Remember that the veritable bravery also, as the philosopher sees it, is a form of that "knowledge," which in truth includes in itself all other virtues, all good things whatever; that it is a form of "right opinion," and has a kind of insight in it, a real apprehension of the occasion and its claims on one's courage, whether it is worth while to fight, and to what point. Platonic knighthood then will have in it something of the philosophy which resides in plenitude in the class above it, by which indeed this armed conscience of the State, the military order, is continuously enlightened, as we know the conscience of each one of us severally needs to be. And though Plato will not expect his fighting-men, like the Christian knight, like Saint Ranieri Gualberto, [253] to forgive their enemies, yet, moving one degree out of the narrower circle of Greek habits, he does require them, in conformity with a certain Pan-Hellenic, a now fully realised national sense, which fills himself, to love the whole Greek race, to spare the foe, if he be Greek, the last horrors of war, to think of the soil, of the dead, of the arms and armour taken from them, with certain scruples of a natural piety.