What remains binding continues after every external authority that once enforced higher standards has been dissolved. The residual man continues to hold himself to the permanent criterion even though the age offers no confirming power and no shared enforcement. The binding force itself remains intact. Only the collective structures that once made it public have disappeared.
Young men who still feel the need for a binding standard often look for residual authorities or residual communities that will impose it from outside. Most of those authorities have already adjusted the standard until it no longer differs from the horizontal demands of the age. The residual path does not wait for external enforcement. It continues to hold the permanent measure as binding from the interior center that still recognizes its force.
This solitary binding is the residual form of the older traditional obligation that once ordered both the individual and the higher functions of a civilization. The man who keeps the measure binding already performs the residual duty. That duty does not become less real because it is no longer collective.
Hold what remains binding. Do not wait for the age to restore conditions in which higher standards are publicly enforced. The residual act is to keep the permanent criterion effective in every concrete decision. That effectiveness is the continuity of the higher type under residual conditions.