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projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate |
literary goal, as an end in itself--to which any didactic, intellectual or |
philosophical values contained in a novel are only the means. |
"Let me stress this: my purpose is not the philosophical enlightenment of my |
readers...My purpose, first cause and prime mover is the portrayal of Howard |
Roark [or the heroes of Atlas Shrugged} as an end in himself... |
"I write--and read--for the sake of the story...My basic test for any story is: |
’Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is |
this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure |
of contemplating these characters an end in itself?’... |
"Since my purpose is the presentation of an ideal man, I had to define and |
present the conditions which make him possible and which his existence requires. |
Since man’s character is the product of his premises, I had to define and |
present the kinds of premises and values that create the character of an ideal |
man and motivate his actions; which means that I had to define and present a |
rational code of ethics. Since man acts among and deals with other men, I had to |
present the kind of social system that makes it possible for ideal men to exist |
and to function--a free, productive, rational system which demands and rewards |
the best in every man, and which is, obviously, laissez-faire capitalism. |
"But neither politics nor ethics nor philosophy is an end in itself, neither in |
life nor in literature. Only Man is an end in himself." |
Are there any substantial changes I would want to make in The Fountainhead? |
No--and, therefore, I have left its text untouched. I want it to stand as it was |
written. But there is one minor error and one possibly misleading sentence which |
I should like to clarify, so I shall mention them here. |
The error is semantic: the use of the word "egotist" in Roark’s courtroom |
speech, while actually the word should have been "egoist." The error was caused |
by my reliance on a dictionary which gave such misleading definitions of these |
two words that "egotist" seemed closer to the meaning I intended (Webster’s |
Daily Use Dictionary, 1933). (Modern philosophers, however, are guiltier than |
lexicographers in regard to these two terms.) |
The possibly misleading sentence is in Roark’s speech: "From this simplest |
necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the |
skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single |
attribute of man--the function of his reasoning mind." |
This could be misinterpreted to mean an endorsement of religion or religious |
ideas. I remember hesitating over that sentence, when I wrote it, and deciding |
that Roark’s and my atheism, as well as the overall spirit of the book, were so |
clearly established that no one would misunderstand it, particularly since I |
said that religious abstractions are the product of man’s mind, not of |
supernatural revelation. |
But an issue of this sort should not be left to implications. What I was |
referring to was not religion as such, but a special category of abstractions, |
the most exalted one, which, for centuries, had been the near-monopoly of |
religion: ethics--not the particular content of religious ethics, but the |
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abstraction "ethics," the realm of values, man’s code of good and evil, with the |
emotional connotations of height, uplift, nobility, reverence, grandeur, which |
pertain to the realm of man’s values, but which religion has arrogated to |
itself. |
The same meaning and considerations were intended and are applicable to another |
passage of the book, a brief dialogue between Roark and Hopton Stoddard, which |
may be misunderstood if taken out of context: |
"’You’re a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark--in your own way. I can see that |
in your buildings.’ |
"’That’s true,’ said Roark." |
In the context of that scene, however, the meaning is clear: it is Roark’s |
profound dedication to values, to the highest and best, to the ideal, that |
Stoddard is referring to (see his explanation of the nature of the proposed |
temple). The erection of the Stoddard Temple and the subsequent trial state the |
issue explicitly. |
This leads me to a wider issue which is involved in every line of The |
Fountainhead and which has to be understood if one wants to understand the |
causes of its lasting appeal. |
Religion’s monopoly in the field of ethics has made it extremely difficult to |
communicate the emotional meaning and connotations of a rational view of life. |
Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against |
man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them |
outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. "Exaltation" is usually taken to mean |
an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. "Worship" means the |
emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man. |
"Reverence" means the emotion of a sacred respect, to be experienced on one’s |
knees. "Sacred" means superior to and not-to-be-touched-by any concerns of man |
or of this earth. Etc. |
But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension |
exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without |
the self-abasement required by religious definitions. What, then, is their |
source or referent in reality? It is the entire emotional realm of man’s |
dedication to a moral ideal. Yet apart from the man-degrading aspects introduced |
by religion, that emotional realm is left unidentified, without concepts, words |
or recognition. |
It is this highest level of man’s emotions that has to be redeemed from the murk |
of mysticism and redirected at its proper object: man. |
It is in this sense, with this meaning and intention, that I would identify the |
sense of life dramatized in The Fountainhead as man-worship. |
It is an emotion that a few--a very few--men experience consistently; some men |
experience it in rare, single sparks that flash and die without consequences; |
some do not know what I am talking about; some do and spend their lives as |
frantically virulent spark-extinguishers. |
Do not confuse "man-worship" with the many attempts, not to emancipate morality |
from religion and bring it into the realm of reason, but to substitute a secular |
meaning for the worst, the most profoundly irrational elements of religion. For |
instance, there are all the variants of modern collectivism (communist, fascist, |
Nazi, etc.), which preserve the religious-altruist ethics in full and merely |
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substitute "society" for God as the beneficiary of man’s self-immolation. There |
are the various schools of modern philosophy which, rejecting the law of |
identity, proclaim that reality is an indeterminate flux ruled by miracles and |