The Journals of Ayn Rand (42 page)

[Regarding Roark:]

A whole life lived on a certain principle. The highlights of that life. The quality of that life, proceeding from that principle—with the result of grandeur, heroism, beauty, pride, honor, truth,
joy.
Not
for
anyone, but in itself, in the man—and secondarily in those he touches and in his benefit to society—
only secondarily
and precisely because of the first, because of his disregard for society. (Steel-will, hardness, cruelty—the cruelty turning into his own brand of almost unbearable beauty.)

1942

In last scene with Katie—on how hard it is to do what one wants—Keating says: “Why did I choose a profession I hated?”

The deliberate destruction of the prime movers by the second-handers—Mallory’s “the genius recognized too well.”

The second-handers [offer] substitutes for competence, such as love, charm, kindness—
easy
substitutes—and there is no substitute for creation.

We must be
ashamed
to admit second-hander’s motives—acts of altruism.

On
second-handers:
[they are] always concerned with people—not facts, ideas, work or production. What would happen to the world without those who think, work and produce?
[For the answer,
see Atlas Shrugged.]

 

 

[For the scene in which Wynand wanders the streets after he has betrayed Roark.
]

Bottle caps. Pawn shop. Subway grating.

Flashback.

Housewives, pushcart, grocery markets—“my masters.”

Power—slavery to those you rule—or—the Toohey kind. The self as thought; they escape from thought; [this escape is turned] into a system and a virtue. I never had any power. The destructive mass.

Shakespeare movie—Tchaikovsky juke box.

Austen Heller and the
Globe,
whom he despised.

Roark was my own self—the kind of victory I could have had.

He buys paper and reads editorial (to anyone who wished, for the sum of three cents, I have sold Howard Roark).

Hell’s Kitchen—“I never got out—I surrendered to the grocery man and the ferry boat sailors.”

What I had wanted—“The defense rests.”

Skyscrapers. (I’ve betrayed you—I have no right to love the city.)

I deserved it, I unleashed the monster.

A great many
Banners
—the one with Roark and the heel print.

That I built it—I was the prime mover—I made it possible for the beast—the unforgivable—hatred of own life—no gallantry. (Forgivable for the “little people”—not for him.)

Will go back to Dominique—only pity—the kind of marriage she wanted.

The unforgivable sin.

 

 

1942

The worst crime of all on earth—to repeat a borrowed opinion. (We can’t all be geniuses, but independence of judgment is involved in any act or comment.)

The irresponsibility of the second-hander.
This
is the drooling beast [referred to by the character Steven Mallory]: that the man acts, but his reasons are so scattered that they’re nowhere and he cannot be reasoned with.

Play up to the opinions of people? But most of them have no opinions. The vacuum—until someone (like Toohey) chooses to fill it.

Second-handedness (even its true altruistic form) is so much easier than self-respect. Oneself is the person one can never fool.

Wynand is a great tragedy—the reverse of the famous geniuses—they were creators in their work, second-handers in their personal life. Wynand is reversed—but the same tragic contradiction and inner battle. (Wynand says he’ll achieve his purpose when he wishes.)

When people believe that others are their prime virtue, they have only two alternatives: do what others believe (slavishness) or force their own belief for the good of others.

 

 

[The following seems to be for Roark’s speech.
]

What is life? Consciousness, thought, valuing, creation—all egotistical conceptions. That is the ego.

What are second-handers? Those who place their basic reality in other people’s eyes. (Keating, Toohey, Wynand, dictators, “devoted” mothers, vain society women, etc.; the destructive envy—Eleanor Roosevelt.) Reflected reality.

Why altruism had to become second-handedness and can be nothing else.

Semshness—not crush others, but
independent
of others.

Not “egotism” and “altruism” but “selfishness” and “second-handedness.”

Toohey’s words about antonyms—the basic test—that which is of life and that which is of death.

The great reversal—the joke on mankind.

The virtues and the vices—vices are collective.

One cannot eat for others.

Christ and Nietzsche.

What we permit—what the test of virtue should be.

The second-handers against men who rule nature.

 

 

“Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered fire ...”

The persecution and exploitation of the Action Man—martyrs of history.

Action Men live for themselves.

Everything we have comes from them—all they ask is to give.

Before one can give, one must create.

Usefulness—but it cannot be reversed.

What do they ask in return?—their freedom, their right to exist for themselves.

Cooperation, but not collectivism. Each for himself. Use the product of others and add that which is new and yours. The first man finding a new world for the first time—the only form of giving.

I refuse to exist for anyone or anything else.

The world is perishing from an orgy of “sacrificing.”

I had to state my terms—here they are. I gave you that building.

You have worshipped slaves and rulers, but fear the independent man above all. “Each man classifies himself.”

In the name of Henry Cameron, Steve Mallory and all the others. “For a man who doesn’t want to be named, but who’s sitting in this courtroom and knows that I’m speaking of him.”

What you do to me does not matter to me.

(I’m an architect and I can read blueprints—I understand yours.)

“The lights are going out all over the world.”

 

 

[The following lengthy paper was written for prospective publishers, probably in 1940
.]

The theme of this novel is individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but within a man’s soul. It is the conflict of these two principles in their fundamental aspect.

As a consequence, it is also a definition of what constitutes selfishness and a defense of selfishness in its true spiritual sense.

The four men, after whom the four parts of the novel are named, present four different attitudes toward these two basic, irreconcilable principles.

Howard Roark,
the hero of the novel, is a man utterly devoid of the collective sense. He is not an enemy of mankind, but much more than that: he is spiritually unconscious of the existence of other men. Basically, life is consciousness; to live means to think; the fundamental process which constitutes life itself is the process of thought; thought is the creator of all values; the practical application of thought is man’s work, his labor, his creative activity—and all labor is a creative activity to some degree. In these two realms—his thought and his labor—Roark is utterly independent of all other men. He faces life as if he were the first man born. Nothing stands between the evidence of his senses and the conclusions his mind draws from them. He does not even reject the conception of: “I must believe this because others believe it”—he goes much beyond rejection: he simply is unable to understand the possibility of such a conception. An entity such as “others” does not exist in the roots of his consciousness. Thus, the aim of his life-and his desires in life—lie within him alone.

He is an architect. He builds as he wishes to build, as he considers right to build. He is true to his own truth—he knows no other. Tradition and custom—what others have done before him or what others wish him to do now—have absolutely no meaning for him. He is a first motive, a prime mover, a creator of values, a creator in the only possible sense of the word. He is the life-giving principle itself, personified in a man. His work is his only reality and his only great passion. His happiness depends on nothing but his own achievement. And he finds, in that achievement, a sensation beyond happiness, a sensation for which the word ecstasy is inadequate, a sensation which is a reason in itself, which justifies all existence: Man at the highest possible to him.

His valuation of himself depends on nothing but the concrete reality of his achievement. He is good if he is convinced that his work is good. What others think of it or of him does not matter. His happiness, his pride, the motive power of his will to live concern no one but himself and depend on no one else. Of course, he needs other men; but that need is secondary, not primary. As an architect, he needs clients; he needs people to live in the buildings he designs; but the difference is this: he needs clients in order to build; he does not build in order to have clients; while creating, he is essentially alone; the creation is the end, people are the means, a secondary means; he does not achieve
through
other men nor
for
other men; he achieves through and for himself alone, then offers it to others.

Thus, spiritually he is a paragon of selfishness. And his life presents a strange paradox: outwardly, his life follows the course conventionally considered as that of an unselfish man; he sacrifices everything to his convictions, to the integrity of his work; he is not concerned with wealth, fame, admiration or physical comfort; he lives in poverty; he is a martyr to an ideal. Thus the devotion to an ideal, the noblest feeling possible to man, is also the most selfish.

The second paradox is in Roark’s relations to other men. Basically, he needs nothing from them; so he demands nothing of them. And thus, when he is a friend, he is the only true friend those around him possess. He does not love all men abstractly and indiscriminately. His love, as everything else he experiences, has to have a basis in his own reason. Men have to earn his love. And what he respects and appreciates in men is the same kind of spiritual independence as his own. But when he likes a man, he likes him for that man’s own sake; not for what he, Roark, can get from that man, not for what that man can give him. His love is respect for the other man’s own value—apart from himself, apart from any relation to himself. Thus his attitude towards other men is completely selfless—in the only noble and benevolent meaning of that word. He will not sacrifice himself for others; neither will he sacrifice them for himself. He will not let others enslave him; neither will he enslave them. He does not exist for the sake of others; neither does he expect them to exist for his sake. Having no fundamental need for other men, he can have no motive for bearing ill will towards them; and more than that: he bears towards them the only good will of any real meaning—the recognition of their own independent value. Such is Howard Roark.

The second man of the novel,
Peter Keating,
is—basically—the utterly selfless man. His spirit is an empty space which other men have to fill. In himself alone, he has nothing to offer—to himself or to the world. He cannot exist, save through others. His consuming ambition is to be great—in other people’s eyes. Thus, at the root of his spirit, others take precedence over his own self. Others establish all his values. Others become the motive power of his will to live. He is an architect. He builds as his clients wish him to build. His work is not an end in itself; it is the means to satisfy other men and to obtain from them in return the one gift he needs so desperately—the gift of their approval and their admiration. He has no convictions of any kind about his work; it is good if others like it; he has never stated to himself a code of right or wrong in relation to his creative activity; to him, right is that which other people consider right, wrong is that which they consider wrong. In his own mind, he does not even ask for the reasons upon which others have based these valuations; to him, the judgment of others is sufficient reason as such. He finds no happiness in his own work; his happiness comes
second-hand,
through the reaction of others to his work.

He achieves the first great triumph of his career when he wins an important competition with a building which he claims to have designed, but which was actually designed by Roark, though no one knows this save Keating and Roark; Keating is happy in the general admiration, even though he knows that he doesn’t deserve it; he is happy in the fact that millions of men consider him a great architect, even though he himself knows that the achievement they admire is not his. If Roark were given the choice of being great in all eyes save his own or of being great in his own knowledge, with all other men ignorant of his greatness—he would choose the last. Peter Keating chooses the first. Thus, to Keating, all reality is second-hand-through others, by others, for others. Fame, above all else, is his greatest desire; the admiration of others for his person is his greatest need. His life is an eternal concern with what others will think, what others will say, how others will react to him.

Outwardly his life follows a course conventionally considered as that of a selfish man. He is not one to sacrifice for an ideal—he has no ideal. He struggles for fame, admiration, prominence, money. He has no scruples in the struggle and he does not hesitate to sacrifice other men who stand in his way. But, fundamentally, he does all this for the spiritual sake of others—or, rather, for the satisfaction of his own spirit which depends on others so completely. He needs the fame and the admiration in order to have the judgment of others grant him his own value; he needs the money in order to impress others with a tangible evidence of his value; he needs the prominence in order to establish his superiority over others. The quest for superiority is his obsession; it is touched with hysteria; it is the most sensitive spot in his soul. Since he has no objective, independent standard by which to establish his own dignity, his pride and his self-respect, he can establish them only by comparison. He is a success to the extent to which others have failed; he is great to the extent of his ability to surpass others. His selfless greatness consists essentially of the degradation of his brother men.