Interior rank is the residual form of the hierarchical principle after every external hierarchy has been dissolved. The residual man continues to order his own being according to higher and lower. He does not treat the absence of external rank as evidence that rank itself has ceased to exist. Rank remains. It has become interior.
The residual age works continuously to erase every distinction of rank. Equality as leveling is its ruling passion. The differentiated man refuses the erasure. He maintains interior distinctions of quality, of firmness, of orientation. The maintenance is the residual form of the older hierarchical order.
Young men are trained by the residual age to treat any interior hierarchy as a form of arrogance or pathology. The residual path rejects that training. Interior rank is not arrogance. It is the concrete continuation of the principle that once ordered traditional civilizations. Without it the man is already leveled.
Maintain interior rank under dissolution. Do not wait for the residual world to restore external hierarchies that the cycle has already withdrawn. The man who continues to order himself according to the permanent measure already lives the residual form of the hierarchical principle.