Isolation as condition is the acceptance that the higher type in a late age will often stand without a people, and must keep form anyway. Isolation here is not a mood and not a brand. It is a fact of the cycle. The climate that once produced companions of the same rank has thinned. A man who requires a matching circle before he will stand will wait until he is dissolved.
Young men treat isolation as either tragedy or identity. Tragedy makes them hungry for any crowd that speaks a few of the right words. Identity makes them proud of emptiness. Both miss the point. Isolation is the given weather. The task is to remain capable of friendship without making friendship the condition of the measure.
This accepted isolation is the residual form of the older traditional knowledge of solitude as a spiritual state. Solitude was once an ascent. It is now often an imposition. The man who uses the imposition as ascent already performs the residual act.
Accept isolation as condition. Do not romanticize it and do not flee it into a false people. The residual act is to keep the measure intact whether companions appear or not. Companionship, if it comes, will then be a surplus rather than a need.