The higher type is the man who has received a vertical measure and become, in one life, the place where that measure still exists. He is not a specialist of doctrine. He is not a collector of moods. He is a form of being. Quality governs quantity in him. The center holds in him. He can act inside a dissolving world without belonging to its dissolution.
This page does not complete him. No page can. A year of orientation, diagnosis, order, distance, and application can only put the demand in front of him with enough force that he can no longer pretend he did not hear it. What he does with the demand is now the only subject. The age will continue to form him if he refuses to form himself.
The traditional world produced this type through a whole climate of caste, rite, and sacred authority. That climate is gone. The type is not gone as a possibility. Ride the Tiger was written for the interval in which the possibility must be realized without the climate. The man who accepts that interval as his ground already stands in the line those books were written to keep open.
Be the higher type. Do not wait for the world to become worthy of him. The work is the same tomorrow as it was on the first day: keep the vertical measure decisive in body, work, speech, desire, friendship, and time. If that measure remains real in you, the year has done what it can do. The rest is your life.