What the age cannot touch is the interior axis once it has been sufficiently formed. The processes of dissolution operate on the external forms, on the collective structures, and on the ordinary human material that has no independent center. They do not automatically penetrate a man who has already transferred his orientation to a measure that does not depend on those forms. The transfer is the residual possibility. Its completion is the work of consistent application under the present conditions.
The age continues to offer new methods of penetration. It works through fatigue, through isolation, through the continuous stimulation of horizontal desires, and through the quiet suggestion that nothing higher remains. These methods succeed against the man who has not yet established the axis. They lose their force against the man who has. The difference is not theoretical. It is visible in the capacity to continue the applications when the surrounding climate grows more hostile to them.
Young men who have begun the work often still experience the age as an overwhelming force. The experience is accurate for as long as the axis remains incomplete. As the applications accumulate, the experience changes. The age continues to move according to its own nature. The man is no longer moved by it in the same way. A domain has been established that the age cannot touch without his consent. The consent is refused.
Continue the formation of that domain. The residual possibility is not a future state that will appear after further study. It is the present capacity of the man who keeps the measure under conditions that give it no external reinforcement. What the age cannot touch is already present in the consistency of that measure.