Consistency is the cumulative result of the applications already set out. The body ordered on one day and abandoned on the next is not ordered. The speech measured in one conversation and released in the next is not measured. The higher type is formed by the refusal to allow the permanent measure to become intermittent. Intermittence is the preferred mode of the age. It permits the appearance of orientation without the substance.
The practical demand is the continuation of the same standard across the variations of mood, energy, and external circumstance. The man who applies the measure only when conditions are favorable has not yet established the measure. He has established a preference. Preference collapses under pressure. Consistency does not. The difference is visible only over the course of weeks and months. That is why the age, which lives in the immediate, cannot recognize it.
Young men are trained to treat consistency as rigidity or as a lack of spontaneity. The higher type treats it as the necessary condition of any real formation. Without it the work of intensification remains a sequence of separate efforts that never cohere into a type. With it the separate efforts begin to reinforce one another. The ordered body supports the ordered speech. The ordered time supports the ordered desire. The whole becomes more than the sum of the parts.
Examine the points at which the standard is currently allowed to lapse. Those points are the exact locations where the type remains incomplete. Close them without waiting for ideal conditions. Consistency is not achieved by a single decision. It is achieved by the repeated decision to continue when the reason for continuing is no longer felt. That repetition is the work that remains after every other application has been understood.