Without being dissolved is the negative condition of the entire stance. Everything else — the use of modern instruments, the movement with the current, the long view — is worthless if the man himself is finally reduced to the same horizontal substance as the mass. Dissolution works by erosion. It does not always announce itself with dramatic crises. It works through the steady normalization of lower standards, the gradual acceptance of what would once have been refused, the slow loss of the interior tension that keeps the higher measure alive.
The differentiated individual therefore watches for the signs of erosion in himself. He notices when attention begins to scatter beyond recovery, when desire begins to dictate the terms of action, when the judgment of the age begins to weigh more heavily than the judgment of the center. Each of these is a point of possible dissolution. The response is not panic. The response is the quiet return to the unmoved center already established.
This vigilance is lifelong. There is no moment at which the danger passes. The age continues to press. New techniques of dissolution appear as older ones become familiar. The man who believes he has finished the work of remaining intact has already begun to open the door. The work is daily and without final certificate.
The possibility of remaining undissolved is real precisely because the center is not a product of the age. It is drawn from a principle the age cannot generate and cannot finally destroy. The man who holds to that principle can pass through the dissolving forces and emerge on the other side still himself. That emergence is the only victory still available in the present phase of the cycle.