The absolute individual is not the modern ego asserting its preferences. He is the man who has become, within himself, the seat of a higher law that the surrounding world no longer supplies. Where Tradition once provided the forms, the ranks, and the measures, the differentiated man must now carry those realities as living forces inside his own being. The absolute quality of this individuality lies in its independence from the collective and the contingent.
This is a severe requirement. It means that the man can no longer rely on external confirmation. The age will not recognize his standard. It will often treat that standard as an eccentricity or a threat. He must therefore become capable of standing by the law he has recognized without the support of numbers, institutions, or public approval. The strength required is the strength of the principle itself, not the strength of personal willfulness.
Many confuse this type with the isolated rebel or the self-obsessed modern. The distinction is decisive. The absolute individual is absolute because he is oriented to something higher than himself. His individuality is the form through which that higher principle continues to act when all outer supports have collapsed. Without that orientation the claim to absolute individuality collapses into ordinary egotism.
The young man who moves toward this type must test himself continuously. Does the center he claims still answer to a measure above personal desire and personal resentment? If it does, the individuality is real. If it does not, he has only changed the costume of the horizontal man. The absolute individual is rare because the test is exacting and the age offers every incentive to fail it.