The Journals of Ayn Rand Read online

  Is there—or should there be—such a thing as emotion opposed to reason? Isn’t it merely a form of undeveloped reason, a form of stupidity?

  How and why can will be considered apart from the mind? If thinking is free from subconscious influences—why not the will?

  And if, as according to [H. L.] Mencken, the question of “freedom of the will” has to be studied on the basis of psychology with all its dark complexes—then what are we actually studying? Will as it is expressed in subnormal cases? Or in normal, average cases? Or in the highest instances of the human [mind]?

  Are we studying will as it is actually in the majority of cases—or as it can be essentially, as a human attribute?

  Do we judge all human terms as applied to existing humanity or to humanity’s highest possibility?

  If we are trying to form a general conception of a “stomach,” do we study a hundred diseased stomachs and form our general conception from them, so that “stomach” as such is something with a number of diseases attached to it—or do we find the healthy stomach first, in order to learn what it is, and then judge the others by comparison?

  Is ethics necessarily and basically a social conception? Have there been systems of ethics written primarily on the basis of an individual? Can that be done?

  Are ethics at all a matter of history? Does it matter how and where they developed? Is a history of ethics necessary? I believe only a system of ethics is necessary, and it has to stand or fall on its own merits—not on any history or far away beginning. For instance, when discussing the social instinct—does it matter whether it had existed in the early savages? We do not judge the value of an automobile by the first chariot ever used in the history of men. Supposing men were born social (and even that is a question)—does it mean that they have to remain so?

  “Social life,” said Kropotkin, “that is, we, not I, is the normal form of life (in man). It is life itself.” Good God Almighty!!!! [Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin (1842-1941) was a Russian socialist who advocated the revolt of the “working class. ”]

  This is exactly what I’m going to fight. For the exact opposite is true.

  If man started as a social animal—isn’t all progress and civilization directed toward making him an individual? Isn’t that the only possible progress? If men are the highest of animals, isn’t man the next step?

  May 15, 1934

  In regard to The Revolt of the Masses [by José Ortega y Gasset]: Isn’t it a terrible generalization—that can be interpreted in too many different ways—to say that a “noble” man strives to serve and obey, and the “mass” man to do as he pleases?

  If what is meant is the noble man’s servitude to his own standards and ideas—is that to be called servitude? If the standards are his, isn’t he precisely obeying himself and doing what he pleases? No truly noble man is going to obey standards set for him by someone else. That is the action of the mass man. It is the mass man who cannot do as he wishes, because he has no wishes; he has to have his standards—or the nearest to that word that he can come—dictated to him.

  This leads me again to a question that is part of the general “free will” question. What exactly is freedom? Surely, freedom does not mean an empty blank. If a man obeys his own ideals—how can that be called servitude? If a man has no ideals at all—why is that called freedom? How can any human quality, such as freedom, be disconnected from its content? Isn’t there a terrible mistake of abstraction here? Isn’t it as Nietzsche said: “Not freedom from what, but freedom for what?”

  This leads to another question—my question of the “supreme egoism.” There exists that body of ideas which represents all the so-called intellectual and spiritual values: ethics, philosophy, etc. (This requires a better definition and analysis—which has to be done later.) My “supreme egoism” consists of the right to apply these values to oneself and to live them. For example: if a man is convinced that religion is wrong, he has to be and profess to be an atheist. The vile, dangerous habit of today is to admit, for instance, that religion is valuable to the majority and, therefore, go to church, profess to be religious, etc., in order to gain something by playing down to the masses. As a consequence, the horrible paradox of our time is that intellectual values are left only to the masses, that they become a special, exclusive privilege of the masses, who not only have no right to them, but lack completely even the elementary organ for anything approaching intellectual ideas. It is as if one left sight only as a privilege of the blind. The so-called “selfish” man of today uses “ideas” only as means to attain his own end. But what is that end? What is accomplished if the man attains power and prominence at the cost of playing down to the masses? It is not he that triumphs, it is not his ideas and standards. It is only his physical frame. Essentially, he is only a slave to those masses. [This idea was later to find dramatic expression in the character of Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead.] This explains my meaning when I consider the “selfish,” ambitious man of today as essentially unselfish, or rather selfless. The true selfishness is that which demands the right to its own higher ideas and values. The “supreme egoism” is that which claims things for their essential, not their secondary values.

  An example from my own experience, which, at the present time, affects me most, is the fact that few men have the ability or the desire to judge literary work by its essential worth. To most men, that work becomes valuable only after it has been recognized as such by someone else. They themselves do not have any standards of their own (and they do not feel the lack). The same is true of any other field of mental activity: scientific, philosophical, etc. This is the great unselfishness of today. As a matter of fact, unselfishness is merely selflessness. The true, highest selfishness, the exalted egoism, is the right to have one’s own theoretical values and then to apply them to practical reality. Without that self there are no values. Here again—ethics based on self, not on society, the mass, the collective, or any other form of selflessness.

  From this—to another question. There have been too many philosophical abstractions, too much intellectual “algebra”—as is illustrated best by that statement from The Revolt of the Masses about the noble man’s servitude. It is an algebraic formula into which [are inserted] too many different arithmetical contents. What we need is an “arithmetic” of the spirit. Algebra—spiritually—is too much of the mob, of the masses, the collective, being too general. The individual is the arithmetical quantity of the spirit. And in things spiritual—or intellectual (which is essentially the same)—it is only the individual and the particular, concrete problem that counts. Algebraic constructions are only a convenience. In practice, they have no use, unless the proper arithmetical content is inserted into the formula. But in the field of philosophy today there is this tendency of considering the algebraic formula as final, and therefore philosophy has no practical significance or application. Returning to what I said at the beginning of these notes, there is no need for theory which cannot be applied in practice. More than that, such theory is not only useless, but dangerous and fatal, for it lies at the bottom of that frightful phenomenon of believing one thing and living another. If by practical reality I mean the actual living of an individual, then there is no need for anything which is not this practical reality, which is not actual living. This is a point which can and will be strongly debated, but it has to be the cornerstone of my philosophy—proving the supremacy of actual living over all other considerations, in fact proving that there are no other considerations. As a result, my “arithmetic” of philosophy has to be philosophy brought up to the realm of actual living. (I say intentionally brought up to it, not down.) This—I expect—will be its vital strength. [We can see the first seeds of AR’s later theory of concepts in her identification of the relation between abstractions and concretes as similar to that between algebra and arithmetic. Her primary concern here is to reject the Platonic rationalism that detaches abstractions from concretes, and affirm the Aristotelian premise that only concretes exist. However, her characterization of abstractions as “collective” and “only a convenience ” conflicts with her mature views. For a full presentation of AR’s theory, see Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.]

  That philosophical “algebra” is, to my mind, the greatest crime of metaphysics, if I understand that word correctly. It is the result of that underlying error of human thinking—which forgets the distinction between abstraction and reality, thus denying reality. For abstractions are only a convenience, not a fact, a means, not an end. This—for the basis of philosophy as a science. For science essentially deals with facts. The next step will be to define just what are facts. Which will bring me to human reason as the basis of all facts, scientific or philosophical. More about that later.

  (All these things are only for my own use. They are pretty disjointed and not in any logical sequence. But what will [ultimately] come out of this is an arrangement of the whole in a logical system, proceeding from a few axioms in a succession of logical theorems. The axioms will be necessary—even mathematics has them—[because] you can’t build something on nothing. The end result will be my “Mathematics of Philosophy.”)

  I have to study: philosophy, higher mathematics, physics, psychology.

  As to physics—learn why mind and reason are so decried as impotent when coping with the universe. Isn’t there some huge mistake there?

  It may be considered strange, and denying my own supremacy of reason, that I start with a set of ideas, then want to study in order to support them, and not vice versa, i.e., not study and derive my ideas from that. But these ideas, to a great extent, are the result of a subconscious instinct, which is a form of unrealized reason. All instincts are reason, essentially, or reason is instincts made conscious. The “unreasonable” instincts
are diseased ones. This—for the study of psychology. For the base of the reconciliation of reason and emotions.

  As to psychology—learn whether the base of all psychology is really logic, and psychology as a science is really pathology, the science of how these psychological processes depart from reason. This departure is the disease. What caused it? Isn’t it faulty thinking, thinking not based on logic, [but on] faith, religion?

  All consciousness is reason. All reason is logic. Everything that comes between consciousness and logic is a disease. Religion—the greatest disease of mankind.

  Some day I’ll find out whether I’m an unusual specimen of humanity in that my instincts and reason are so inseparably one, with the reason ruling the instincts. Am I unusual or merely normal and healthy? Am I trying to impose my own peculiarities as a philosophical system? Am I unusually intelligent or merely unusually honest? I think this last. Unless—honesty is also a form of superior intelligence.

  May 16, 1934

  A quotation about Russia, which may be useful, from While Rome Burns by Alexander Woollcott [American journalist and writer]:Then at noon the next day, the neat, bustling, inexcusably cheerful station at Stolyce, Poland. The first cup of good coffee in weeks. Flagrantly trivial newspapers to read. And a great buoyancy of one’s spirit. All returning travelers mention this curious lifting of the sense of oppression-sometimes unnoticed until it does lift, just as you realize how foul the air of a room has been only when you get a whiff from out-of-doors—this exhilarating relief which even one who has hugely enjoyed his stay in the Soviet Union does experience on quitting its territory.... There is nothing mysterious about it. Every man who was ever demobilized remembers this sensation of a recovered freedom. Freedom to sit on a park bench and starve, perhaps. But freedom, brothers, freedom.

  The new conception of the State that I want to defend is the State as a means, not an end; a means for the convenience of the higher type of man. The State as the only organization. Within it—all have to remain individuals. The State, not as a slave of the great numbers, but precisely the contrary, as the individual’s defense against great numbers. To free man from the tyranny of numbers.

  The fault of liberal democracies: giving full rights to quantity (majorities), they forget the rights of quality, which are much higher rights. Prove that differences of quality not only do exist inexorably, but also should exist. The next step—democracy of superiors only. This is not possible without a very high and powerful sense of honor. This, in turn, is not possible without a set of values from which this honor is to be derived. The new set of values: [my] supreme egoism.

  From The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset:[T]he apparent enthusiasm for the manual worker, for the afflicted and for social justice, serves as a mask to facilitate the refusal of all obligations, such as courtesy, truthfulness and, above all, respect or esteem for superior individuals. I know of quite a few who have entered the ranks of some labor organization or other merely in order to win for themselves the right to despise intelligence and to avoid paying it any tribute. [In regard to] Dictatorship, we have seen only too well how they flatter the mass-man, by trampling on everything that appeared to be above the common level.

  May 21, 1934

  “Mankind? It is an abstraction. There are, have been, and always will be, men and only men.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

  I would change that to go one step further: man, only man.

  Has there ever been a history written from the viewpoint not of a nation’s development through its outstanding individuals, but of these individuals’ desperate fight against their nations, for the sake of the development and advancement for which the nation so noisily and arrogantly takes credit after it has made a martyr of the “developer” and “advancer”? History as a deadly battle of the mass and the individual. A scientific task for me: to trace just how many of mankind’s “geniuses” were recognized and honored in their own time. And since they were not—as most of them weren‘t—is there any ground for the conception of any national cultures, histories and civilizations? If there is any such thing as culture and its growth—isn’t it the culture of great individuals, of geniuses, not of nations or any other conglomerations of human creatures? And isn’t history the fight of mankind against advancement, not for it?

  PART 2

  THE FOUNTAINHEAD

  4

  THEME AND CHARACTERS

  AR’s working title for The Fountainhead was Second-Hand Lives. She kept most of her notes for the novel in three ring-bound notebooks. The present chapter offers the complete contents of her first notebook, which begins with a discussion of the theme and then gives character descriptions of Howard Roark, Peter Keating, and Ellsworth Toohey.

  To avoid confusion, I have used the names of the characters as they appear in the novel. In these early notes, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey was Everett Monkton Flent, Peter Keating was Peter Wilson, and John Eric Snyte was Worthington Snyte. AR changed the names about two years after her first notes.

  December 4, 1935

  Second-Hand Lives

  It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning—it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself.

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil

  I. The first purpose of the book is a defense of egoism in its real meaning, egoism as a new faith. Therefore—a new definition of egoism and its living example. If egoism is the quality which makes one put oneself above all—well, in what manner? And—above what? If one goes ruthlessly after one’s aim—what is the aim? It is not what one does or how one does it, but why one does it. It is the ultimate result, the last consequence, the essence and sum of sums which determines the quality of egoism.

  One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself. Fine! But what is that best? Which leads to the question: are morals, or ethics, or all higher values, a thing outside [oneself], i.e., God’s law or society’s prescription, something related not to a man, but to others around him, an ultimatum forced upon man and essentially selfless and unselfish? Or [are these values] a man’s very own, his sacred, highest right, his best inspiration, his real life and real self?

  And further: what is the self? Just the fact that one is born and conscious, just the “I” devoid of all definite content? Or—the “I” that values, selects and knows precisely the qualities which distinguish it from all other “I‘s,” which has reverence for itself for certain definite reasons, not merely because “I-am-what-I-am-and-don’t-know-just-what-I-am.” If one’s physical body is a certain definite body with a certain definite shape and features, not just a body—so one’s spirit is a certain definite spirit with definite features and qualities. A spirit without content is an abstraction that does not exist. If one is proud of one’s body for its beauty, created by certain lines and forms, so one is proud of one’s spirit for its beauty, or that which one considers its beauty. Without that—there can be no pride of spirit. Nor any spirit.

  If the higher values of life (such as all ethics, philosophy, esthetics, everything that results from a sense of valuation in the mental life of man) come from within, from man’s own spirit, then they are a right, a privilege and a necessity—not a duty. They are that which constitutes a man’s life, and if he is an egoist in the best sense of the word he will choose these higher values for himself and for himself alone, i.e., for his own sake and satisfaction, not because of a duty to God, fellow-men, the State or any other fool abstraction outside of himself. A man has a code of ethics primarily for his own sake, not for anyone else’s. Consequently, an ethical man is essentially an egoist. A selfless man cannot be ethical.