Fidelity to the measure is loyalty given to a higher law after every institution that once carried that law has fallen. In a traditional world fidelity had a visible object: a throne, a rite, a caste, a command. Those objects are gone. The law they served is not gone. The differentiated man transfers his fidelity from the vanished support to the measure itself.
Young men look for a banner they can swear to. They want a group, a cause, a restored form that will make loyalty feel public and warm. Public loyalty of that kind is almost always a costume in this phase. The age uses banners to dissolve men further. Fidelity that still has weight is quieter. It is the daily refusal to let the measure slip in the places no one watches.
This solitary fidelity is the residual form of the older traditional knowledge of the oath. An oath once bound a man before gods and witnesses. The residual oath binds him before the criterion he has accepted as higher than himself. The man who keeps that oath already performs the residual act.
Give fidelity to the measure. Do not spend it on scenery that cannot hold it. The residual act is to remain loyal in body, work, speech, and desire when there is no court to praise you for it. That loyalty is the last form of honor still available.