The measure that outlasts recognition is the residual capacity to apply the permanent criterion after every collective recognition of higher order has been withdrawn. The residual man continues to measure himself by that criterion even though the age offers no confirming judgment. The measure itself remains intact. Only the collective recognitions that once made its force public have disappeared.
Young men who still feel the pressure of a higher standard often look for residual judges or residual communities that will keep the measure alive around them. Most of those communities have already been emptied by the horizontal forces that dominate the age. The residual path does not wait for external recognition. It continues as the permanent criterion from the interior center that still recognizes its force.
This solitary measure is the residual form of the older traditional obedience to a higher law. The man who continues to apply it already performs the residual act. That act does not require collective recognition to remain real.
Apply the measure. Do not wait for the age to restore conditions in which the higher criterion is collectively enforced. The residual act is to keep the permanent measure decisive in every concrete decision. That decisiveness is the continuity of the higher type under residual conditions.