The Journals of Ayn Rand Page 15
Here is the place to emphasize that genuinely superior beings are too individualistic [in social matters], in the sense that they achieve their own positions and are not concerned with the propagation and advancement of their own kind. It is only the inferior men that have collective instincts—because they need them. But since the superior men live in society, they have to organize for their own protection—a kind of class brotherhood of talent—if they are to survive at all. The only kind of “unselfishness” permissible to the great man is unselfishness to the cause of that superior form of living which he represents, and which has to be protected in the persons of other individuals like him. (Social instinct as the weapon and protection of the inferior.)
Toohey’s physical appearance: medium height, rather on the shortish side, skinny, anemic, concave-chested, spindly, slightly bow-legged, ridiculous and offensive in a bathing suit. A glaring lack of vitality—compensated, so he thinks, by his intellectual achievements. Long, narrow face, slightly receding chin, protruding upper teeth, in a sharp, circular, rodent fashion—not too good a set of teeth, nor too clean. Narrow, sharp black eyes, set close together, bright and “intellectual” between slightly puffed, heavy lids. A Hitler-like small black mustache—carefully trimmed. Luxurious hair—black, lustrous and faintly suggesting a wave—thoroughly well groomed, leaving just the faintest doubt between natural carelessness or very deliberate, retouched, marcelled picturesqueness. Not a mane, but somehow suggesting a mane—seeming too large for his light frame, making him vaguely top-heavy—more in impression than in fact. Thin, expressive hands and small feet, with a mincing, uncertain, unsteady, nervous walk.
He has a magnificent voice—a true achievement. Deep, low, well-modulated, clear, precise and expressive. Perhaps a little offensive to some people, because of its smug perfection—but to a very few people. He has made a thorough study of voice-culture, but does not like to mention it—prefers to let people think it is natural. Shrugs deprecatingly when complimented on his voice, but never misses or forgets the compliments.
Went into “intellectualism” in a big way. Two reasons: first, a subconscious revenge for his obvious physical inferiority, a means to a power his body could never give him; second (and primary), a cunning perception that only mental control over others is true control, that if he can rule them mentally he is indeed their total ruler. His vanity is not passive like that of Peter, who is concerned with other people only as mirrors for his vanity; Toohey is very much concerned with other people in the sense of an overwhelming desire to dominate them. This is the lust for power, but it is a “second-hand” power. It is motivated not by some deep conviction of his own to be imposed upon others, who would thus be secondary to him and his conviction, but by subconsciously adopting the convictions of others in order to rule them and thus acquire his own grandeur through the number of people he dominates, deriving his self-satisfaction from them. They are actually the prime factor and he a “second-hand” creature devoid of all personal significance but that given to him by others.
In contrast to Peter, Toohey does believe strongly and earnestly in ideals and convictions, but they must be the ideals he has accepted. He is intolerant, impatient and sarcastic to all intellectual opposition. He believes in “principles,” realizing subconsciously that a strict adherence to a set of principles delivers men into his hands when he is the chief proponent of these principles. He is the loud defender of the “intellect,” of “brain over brawn” or “mind over matter.” Such words as “culture,” “civilization,” “progress,” “the spiritual heritage of centuries,” “ethics,” “esthetics,” and “philosophy” are his favorites, to the point where he has become convinced that he is their living embodiment.
Now as to his convictions. [As a consequence of] his basic lust for power—a “second-hand” power not expressed in any concrete ideal of his own—his convictions are all those which are expedient to his attainment of such power. He has realized ahead of many others the tremendous power of the masses, which, for the first time, are acquiring real significance in all (even the intellectual) aspects of life. In this sense, he is the man of the century, the genius of modern democracy in its worst meaning.
The first cornerstone of his convictions is equality—his greatest passion. This includes the idea that, as two-legged human creatures, all possess certain intrinsic value by the mere fact of having been born in the shape of men, not apes. Any concrete, mental content inside the human shape does not matter. A great brain or a great talent or a magnificent character are of no importance as compared to that intrinsic value all possess as men—whatever that may be. He is never clear on what that may be and rather annoyed when the question is raised. He avoids it by running to meet it and by silencing the issue with a great deal of talk. He talks of the “human spirit,” the “spark of God in all of us,” the “man created in God’s own image,” the “best in the worst of us,” etc.
His talk is on a grand scale, staggering, magnificent, its bromides well-hidden under the latest scientific terms, the whole worked out brilliantly on the formula of saying things that sound profound until one stops to think of what exactly they mean and finds that they mean nothing. Inasmuch as beliefs are important to him only as a means to an end, and that is the extent of his belief in beliefs, he is not bothered by his inconsistencies, by the vagueness and illogic of his convictions. They are efficient and effective to secure the ends he is seeking. They work—and that is all they’re for.
Once the equality of men is established, the advantages to his type are obvious. It discredits the superior type of man whom he hates, dreads and envies. It minimizes, through a metaphysical, “humanitarian” hocus-pocus, the qualities and virtues which the superior type possesses and which he lacks. It denies superiority and subordinates it to that vague “humanness” which he can claim along with everyone else. But, mainly, it assures him of superiority—his brand of it. Deeply and subconsciously he knows that he is a second-rater and a representative of the average. That [knowledge], aided by a certain amount of brains, puts him in the category of “upper-class average”; but he is devoid of all individuality and creative power, which dooms him hopelessly to the average (in other words, he is a plain average man spiritually, but slightly above the mob mentally, in the facile sense of cunning, not wisdom). [Hence] he becomes the true representative, leader and condensation of the average. Once the [men at the top] are removed or discredited, he is the top. As the best representative of the masses, he can attain the prominence, distinction and power [which would be] impossible to him on his own personal merits. In an individualistic society, where men have to stand or fall by what they really are in themselves, where they are valued as single men and by no other standard—he is nothing. In a collective mass society, where quantity stands above quality (another unreal, “second-hand” substitution)—he is everything. Hence his profound urge toward equality and collectivism, or his “social conscience,” as he calls it.
This “social conscience” is an outstanding, dominant trait in him. He has an instinctive interest in everything concerning others. He is the born spiritual meddler, reformer, and “social worker.” Societies, clubs, lodges, organizations of any kind attract him irresistibly. His is not the cruder interest of Peter, who joins for what he can get out of it for himself. Toohey joins to take an active part, for what he can do to others. In everything he joins he soon becomes the leading voice and the influence. He is no rank-and-file member, ever; he is always on the committee or the board of directors. He is not after advancing his own career; he is after molding the lives of others, which is his career. (The monstrosity of “selfless” egotism.) One will always find him on the stationery of “Slum Clearance Leagues,” “Mass Education Leagues,” “Modern Education Leagues,” “Recreation for the Poor Leagues,” “Social Foundation Leagues,” and prize-giving “Art Leagues.”
Toohey is a “humanitarian” and a “radical.” He is a humanitarian because his great love for and eternal preoccupation with humanity gives him the standing and prestige he does not possess as a man; it fills the void [caused by a lack] of all individual creativity, the void in a man who has nothing to offer in himself, only in, through and for others. (A “second-hand” man par excellence. Only those who have nothing in themselves are too concerned with others.) He is a radical because the theory of the triumphant, totalitarian mass is still a new one in the world, particularly in its spiritual implications and sources, which he realizes full-well, but never mentions explicitly. Up to the twentieth century and Soviet Russia, the world [had offered some degree] of recognition for individual achievement, recognition of leaders and exceptions as opposed to the masses; the trend of “liberalism” and the idea of “freedom” was freedom for “a man” and the fight for the individual rights of “a man.” When humanity achieved that freedom after the Industrial Revolution, or came as near to freedom and general equality before the law as it had ever come, one thing became apparent to the deluded idealists who, in fighting for the “rights of man,” included all men, presumed all men to be equal, or at least potentially equal given equal opportunities. Whether under modern capitalism the best men always won (and undoubtedly they often did not) was not as important as the fact that capitalistic democracy showed plainly that there is a best. And that the best [among men] are opposed to the rest of humanity.
The liberals and humanitarians are now faced with a choice: either admit that there are differences among men more profound and irrefutable than those of money or aristocratic birth, and therefore fight for the rights and the freedom of the best among men, rights and freedom which the average men do not want, do not understand and cannot use or protect, and stop the damnable preoccupation with the “poor” as such, the poor who have no dist
inction beyond their poverty; or—deny these ideals and, keeping only the philosophical zeal for all humanity, bring mankind down to the level of the masses, deny to the few the rights which endanger the masses, benefit the masses by destroying their eternal enemy—the exceptional man, and instead of fighting for the individual rights which have hitherto been known as “human” rights, reverse the process, fight against these rights, for these rights are the enemy, not the liberation of the masses. [By “masses” AR refers here to second-handers who wish to live by exploiting better men. For evidence of her respect for honest men of average ability, see the characters of Mike Donnigan in The Fountainhead and Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged.]
Communism, the Soviet variety particularly, is not merely an economic theory. It does not demand economic equality and security in order to set each individual free to rise as he chooses. Communism is, above all, a spiritual theory which denies the individual, not merely as an economic power, but in every respect. It demands spiritual subordination to the mass in every way conceivable—economic, intellectual, artistic; it allows individuals to rise only as servants of the masses, only as mouthpieces for the great average. It places Ellsworth Monkton Toohey at the top of the human pyramid.
Hence, Toohey’s natural “radicalism.” In it, he is subtler, deeper and more consistent than many a modem communist. If some communists come to a spiritual collectivism somewhat reluctantly, as a necessity for achieving economic collectivism, Toohey reverses the process, much more logically. He embraces spiritual collectivism first; economic collectivism is only a means to that ultimate end.
When and if the mob is enthroned as the supreme arbiter of all life, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey will rule the earth. As a voice of the mob, to be sure; but to a “second-hand” man this does not matter. What if he is only the servant spiritually—when there is nothing in his spirit that may wish to rule, no ideals, no convictions, no creative power strictly his own? Spiritual servility is not abhorrent to a man devoid of spirituality, in the only sense in which spirituality exists—in the powerful, self-contained, self-reverent ego. In actual, material life—devoid of all spiritual content, as a collective life must be when the only source of spirt, the ego, is removed—he will be the ruler. He will have no fear of competition from his spiritual superiors, since they will be destroyed, or if any are still born they will have no chance against him, [because they] lack his power of mob appeal when the mob is supreme. And the only danger to his power—the spiritual or mental life of humanity—will be taken care of by an all-pervading propaganda for the ideals that made his rise possible, the ideals of mob supremacy, a smoke-screen to fill the emptiness of the human spirit, a spirit castrated, denied and offered its own denial to satisfy its hunger.
Such is Toohey’s secret dream and Utopia. He knows all the possible approaches to it and his convictions derive from that, have that dream as a motivation. Everything that proceeds from the individual and the exception is bad; everything that proceeds from the masses and the average is good. He takes a great interest in folklore, in anonymous legends and songs, as opposed to individual creations of artists. He proclaims the supremacy of “folk art” over any other art. He adopted the Marxist theory easily and naturally, primarily because it discredits the significance of individuals in history in favor of the economic significance of the masses; also, in subordinating the spiritual to the economic, in proclaiming the dependence of the spirit upon the material, it gives men like Toohey a great weapon against their enemy, the spirit: just take control of humanity’s economics—[which is] concrete and accessible—and you can (hope to) control humanity’s spirit.
In opposing the existing order of society, it is not the big capitalists and their money that Toohey opposes; he opposes the faint conceptions of individualism still existing in that society, and the privileged few as its material symbols. He says that he is fighting Rockefeller and Morgan; he is fighting Beethoven and Shakespeare. He says he is fighting for a comfortable home with a bathroom for every financially disinherited factory hand; he is fighting for a comfortable throne and a halo for every spiritually disinherited Toohey. Hence his great preoccupation with the poor and the lower classes. He is known as a great, unselfish crusader in unselfish causes; his crusade is thoroughly selfish in the [sense of the] perverted selfless selfishness of the “second-hander.”
It is not surprising, therefore, to find him with a reputation of “daring,” “progressiveness” and “originality.” He is all of that, in the sense that the total supremacy of the masses is a new idea in the world and he, as its apostle, may be considered daring or original. In that sense, he is the champion of everything “new,” particularly if it helps in the fight against the individualism of the old. He is a great champion of the Art Moderne. He is the defender and publicizer for Gertrude Stein in literature, the “surrealists” in painting, the cacophony of “new” music, and the factory-made standardized modern house in architecture. He knows, half-subconsciously, that all these phony fakes are easy for anyone and deny the true originality, genius and rarity of great artists.
In his chosen profession as an Art and Architecture Critic, he defends, above all, a standard. He is all for the old academic eclecticism, where it imposes rules, restraints and precedents on individual creation; he started as a rabid defender of eclecticism (“We cannot improve upon the masters of the past, accepted and recognized by whole nations and whole centuries of nations”) until he discovered a new standardization in the factory-made “moderne,” this last move in keeping with his social theories and his general reputation for radicalism. Before the spread of the “moderne,” he was opposed to modem architecture. And he has been opposed and is forever opposed to Howard Roark. Peter Keating is his true disciple and protégé, and Peter switches with Toohey from conservative eclecticism to extreme, mechanical, unoriginal modernism. (When convenient. But still continues with his “classic orders”—when convenient.) In the early stages of modern architecture, Toohey decried it and defended the old—on a typical ground: “Why force individual eccentricity and idiosyncrasy on the will and taste of the people expressed in their preference for conventional homes?” With the growth of the philosophy of mob supremacy and the emergence of modernism in set mass-forms, a modernism as stiff and frozen and unoriginal as the old traditions—he switched to it easily and naturally.
He realized, on that example, that to be the true “voice of the people” he had to become a radical opposed to the majority sentiment at present—for the sake of an ultimate, complete triumph for real majority sentiment. The mob had not yet been taught to openly and consistently worship itself as a mob; it still had vestiges of respect for individualism ground into it by centuries of aristocracy; it is the duty of Toohey to teach the mob exactly what to believe in order to inherit the earth; it is his job to awaken the mob to its own power. He can be—and it is only [an apparent] paradox—an exception and a rebel against present society, which, after all, is not yet collectivized spiritually—in order to establish conditions which will make him the true and complete “voice of society.”
Toohey studies voraciously. He has a magnificent memory for facts and statistics; he is known as a “walking encyclopedia.” This is natural—since he has no creative mind, only a repeating, aping, absorbing “second-handed” one. He has nothing new to create, but can acquire importance by absorbing the works and achievements of others. He is a sponge, not a fresh spring. His passively retentive memory has always made him a good scholar; he was a brilliant pupil in school—the kind who always knew his lessons, had the neatest copy-books, preferred his homework to athletic games (in which he would have no chance), wore glasses, often had head-colds, and his mother had to watch his diet. An intellectual child with a delicate stomach.
Since his scholastic achievements took a great deal of painstaking, meticulous work, he has always resented his quick, brilliant classmates to whom study was no effort. Hence, his great defense of hard work as the key to everything (“perspiration is inspiration”), the conviction that hard work can accomplish anything, that talent does not count for so much, because a hard worker can equal and even beat any of “your geniuses.” He was not so good at mathematics in school, but great at history, literature, psychology, and penmanship. He went to Sunday School, because of a religious lower-middle-class mother (“Christian Science”).