The living criterion is a man who has become, in his own person, the standard he was given, so that the standard no longer exists only as text. Texts can be stored, quoted, and betrayed in the same afternoon. A living criterion cannot be handled that way. He either remains the measure in his decisions or he has already left it.
Young men want a criterion outside themselves that will decide every case in advance. No such manual survives in usable form. What survives is a center from which cases can be judged. The differentiated man becomes that center. He does not invent the law. He has received it. He then applies it without asking the age for a ruling.
This embodiment of the criterion is the residual form of the older traditional knowledge of authority. Authority once had a throne. It now has, at most, a man who can still command himself. The man who has become a criterion for his own life already performs the residual act.
Become the living criterion. Do not leave the standard in the pages that taught it to you. The residual act is to let yes and no come from a higher center in the next concrete case. That is the whole office still open.