As the knights share the dignity of the regal order, are in fact ultimately distinguished from it by degree rather than in kind, so they will be sharers also in its self-denying "rule." In common with it, they will observe a singular precept which forbids them so much as to come under the same roof with vessels or other objects wrought of gold or silver--they "who are most worthy of it," precisely because while "many iniquities have come from the world's coinage, they have gold in them undefiled." Yet again we are not to suppose in Platonic Greece-- how could we indeed anywhere within the range of Greek conceptions?-- anything rude, uncomely, or unadorned. No one who reads carefully in this very book of The Republic those pages of criticism which concern art quite as much as poetry, a criticism which drives everywhere at a conscientious nicety of workmanship, will suppose that. If kings and knights never drink from vessels of silver or gold, their earthen cups and platters, we may be sure, would be what we can [254] still see; and the iron armour on their bodies exquisitely fitted to them, to its purpose, with that peculiar beauty which such fitness secures. See them, then, moving, in perfect "Justice" or "Rightness," to their Dorian music, their so expressive plain-song, under the guidance of their natural leaders, those who can see and fore-see--of those who know. That they may be one!--If, like an individual soul, the state has attained its normal differentiation of parts, as with that also its vitality and effectiveness will be proportionate to the unity of those parts in their various single operations. The productive, the executive, the contemplative orders, respectively, like their psychological analogues, the senses, the will, and the intelligence, will be susceptible each of its own proper virtue or excellence, temperance, bravery, spiritual illumination. Only, let each work aright in its own order, and a fourth virtue will supervene upon their united perfections, the virtue or perfection of the organic whole as such. The Justice which Plato has been so long in search of will be manifest at last--that perfect oikeiopragia,+ which will be also perfect co-operation. Oneness, unity, community, an absolute community of interests among fellow-citizens, philadelphia, over against the selfish ambition of those naturally ascendant, like Alcibiades or Crito, in that competition for office, for wealth and honours, which has rent Athens into factions ever breeding [255] on themselves, the centripetal force versus all centrifugal forces:--on this situation, Plato, in the central books of The Republic, dwells untired, in all its variety of synonym and epithet, the conditions, the hazard and difficulty of its realisation, its analogies in art, in music, in practical life, like three strings of a lyre, or like one colossal person, the painted dêmos+ or civic genius on the walls of a Greek town-house, or, again, like the