The unbroken vertical is the residual capacity to remain oriented upward after every collective vertical of higher order has been leveled. The residual man continues to stand in that orientation even though the age offers no confirming height. The vertical itself remains intact. Only the collective heights that once made its direction public have disappeared.
Young men who still feel the upward demand often look for residual heights or residual ideals that will keep the vertical alive around them. Most of those ideals have already been emptied by the horizontal forces that dominate the age. The residual path does not wait for external height. It continues as the permanent orientation from the interior center that still holds the vertical measure.
This solitary vertical is the residual form of the older traditional knowledge of ascent. The man who continues to stand in it already performs the residual act. That act does not require collective heights to remain real.
Remain vertical. Do not wait for the age to restore conditions in which higher orientation is publicly marked. The residual act is to keep the permanent measure decisive in every concrete stance. That decisiveness is the continuity of the higher type under residual conditions.