The stance that remains is the upright form a man keeps when every reason to keep it has been withdrawn by the age. The age offers reasons to slacken: no audience, no restoration, no visible turning of the cycle. Those reasons are accurate as descriptions of the terrain. They are worthless as permissions. The higher type does not stand because the terrain is encouraging. He stands because he is that type.
Young men look for a final justification that would make the stance feel reasonable to the surrounding world. The surrounding world cannot grant that justification. Its metaphysics have no place for a vertical man. Asking it for a reason is already a descent. The stance is self-justifying because it belongs to a higher order of being.
This remaining stance is the residual form of the older traditional knowledge of fidelity unto death. The old world knew men who held a post after the post had ceased to be rewarded. The man who holds his interior post already performs the residual act.
Keep the stance that remains. Do not require the age to make it easy or famous. The residual act is to stay upright after the last external reason has gone. That uprightness is the whole of what a late cycle can still produce of the higher order.