Action in the interval is the residual mode of engagement. The traditional order has ended. A new order, if one is to appear, has not yet taken form. The interval is the long stretch of dissolution in which the residual type must live. Action under these conditions cannot aim at restoration or at the acceleration of some future settlement. It aims at the continued existence of the higher quality in the man himself.
The interval produces a characteristic temptation: the belief that action is pointless until a clearer horizon appears. The temptation is a form of waiting. The residual type does not wait. He acts from the center already established. The action is ordinary in appearance and exact in its orientation. It does not require the interval to end in order to possess meaning.
Young men feel the interval as a kind of suspended time. The suspension can produce either paralysis or frantic activity without direction. Both responses belong to the dissolution. Action in the interval is neither. It is the steady application of the permanent measure to whatever concrete material the day presents. The steadiness itself is the residual form of traditional action.
Act without requiring the interval to justify the act. Keep the residual axis and the interior form under the conditions that the cycle has established. The man who does so is already living the only continuity available in the residual phase. That continuity is the measure of the type.