“But so long as, for any reason, we do not recognize the truth—we are bound to fail and to suffer, in the whole sphere and in all our actions where we have left this truth unrecognized. Our generosity is a good motive? Nothing is good if it motivates lying, falsehood, or evasion. There is no morality except an unbending, absolute recognition of the truth, in relation to everything; an absolute will to find, face, and grasp the truth, to the utmost of our capacity, then to act upon it. Nothing is moral but this cold, ruthless, rational pursuit.

  “But we have not faced or recognized the truth about the parasites—so we fail, we’re helpless, we’re disarmed, and they’ve got us. Did they win over us? No, we won the battle for them. They rule the world? No, we handed it over to them. The guilt is ours, but not in the way they think; in the exactly opposite way. The guilt is that we have refused to see the truth about us and about them.

  “What makes a man a parasite? Nothing and no one but himself. We do not classify him as an inferior—he classifies himself. He is the only one who can. What is the specific action of doing this? The recognition by a man, stated or unstated in his mind (and I think it is usually stated), that he is the creature and the product of others, dependent upon them for the content of his soul. The negation by a man of his primary human attribute (his essential attribute, the one and only attribute that makes him human): his independent rational judgment. This is all that’s necessary; the rest—all the evils, corruptions, perversions—follow automatically.

  “When a man rejects his independent rational judgment he has rejected himself as an entity, as a man, as an end in himself. Whatever happens to him from then on can be nothing but failure and tragedy; he is functioning against his own nature, he is acting against the laws of his own survival. And by the very fact that he is a man (or was born to be and can’t be anything else), some last conscious remnant of [his betrayal] makes him hate himself.

  “He does not know why he has this deep conviction of his own inferiority, of his basic worthlessness, of his being essentially contemptible. He runs, by every means possible, from admitting this conviction to himself, but he knows it’s there. He says, in effect, ”I feel it.“ He ascribes every possible cause to it—his feeling of helplessness against the universe of which he knows so little, his fear of others, his envy of them, his knowledge that he’ll never be able to equal their achievements, that he doesn’t possess their talents, or that they’ll surely fail to recognize his own. All of it is evasion, beside the point, and a consequence, not a cause. He despises himself because he has willfully negated his nature as a man.

  “Were he actually incapable of being an independent rational entity, there would have been no feeling of hatred, evil, misery in him from this negation; he could have no conception of what he had betrayed and no uneasiness about it; a creature cannot hate itself for being what it is. It cannot exist in perpetual pain; pain is a warning of disorder, of the improper, physically or spiritually. A creature born as a physical freak, incapable of survival, would not survive; and such time as it had, would be spent in constant pain, the warning that something is improper, the sign of the misfit in the most basic, essential sense. Man survives through his mind, i.e., his spirit. If his spirit were doomed, by its essence and nature, to constant pain, to hatred of himself, he would not survive. If it was proper for a parasite to be a parasite, if he was by nature incapable of independent rational judgment, he would be happy in that state, happy on his own terms. He would go on copying the motions and repeating the ideas of others, as his natural function, like a monkey. A monkey does not hate itself, nor those it imitates. The misery of the parasite is the proof he was not intended to be a parasite; he was not doomed to it by the cruelty of nature—he did it to himself.

  “What caused him to do it? That does not matter to us too much. Fear—laziness—the desire to escape the responsibility of rationality—the belief in a malevolent universe and, from that, the conviction that if he learns the truth about the universe he will discover the evil and disasters [surrounding] him, therefore he must avoid knowledge of the truth, therefore he must get rid of his means of knowledge, i.e., his reason—the half-digested teachings of others to which he succumbed in childhood before he had begun to think, the whole vicious mess of irrationalism, altruism, and collectivism—all of that can be and is the cause of his pronouncing the verdict of parasite on himself and rejecting his nature as man. These are his reasons, but what concerns us here are the results as they affect us, the results of our relation with the parasite.”

  April 10, 1946

  “In what manner do we allow the parasite to rule us, and what happens when he does? He rules us by the break we allow him to make within us. We accept him as an equal, i.e., a rational being. Then we are torn by the awful spectacle of the irrational around us. We find ourselves in a world we cannot understand, we are helpless and lost. We have allowed him to create around us the kind of world he lives in, or imagines, or fears: the senseless, malevolent universe. We begin to doubt the power of the human mind, the reality or practicality of truth, the possibility of good or justice. We suspect that we might be living in an insane chaos, but that is a supposition with which we cannot exist or function. Yet we must function, that is the basic law of our nature, and so we are caught in a civil war within ourselves and we become objects of perpetual suffering, made so by that very thing which is our life source, our happiness, the moving force of man’s survival—our spiritual independence and creative energy. And when we suffer within ourselves in this essential, primary way, we cannot function at our best—and we are disarmed. The parasite has us where he wants us: functioning only enough to support him, but not enough to be happy, to be strong, to shake him off and get forever out of his reach.

  “We become like the parasite in every respect save our work. That neither he nor any form of suffering nor even our own will can corrupt. That remains untouched. In the sphere of our work we remain ourselves, functioning as we should, true to our nature. But in every other sphere—in our private lives, in our relations with men and the world—we adopt the methods and convictions of the parasite, we are just what he is: torn, uncertain, self-contradictory, vicious, lying, evasive—because we’re doing the same thing, running from the truth, trying to escape from something we don’t want to face. And in such a role, we are, perhaps, more evil than the parasites—if there can be degrees in such a matter. It is then we who poison the world, we who make it evil, we who work for our own destruction. This [applies to] anyone who does not live up to his highest capacity, who betrays his own talent and makes of it his own torture rack. How have we done this? By admitting the parasite into our own soul. By allowing him to be a major concern within us.

  “What happens when he rules us? The kind of vicious world you see, in which the best has been turned into a source of evil, in which competence is the source of failure, life energy is the source of destruction, and the capacity for joy is the source of the most terrible suffering. In this kind of corrupted world, the parasite can survive comfortably without reproach, he can enjoy it, he can exploit us and he can rule.

  “This is what we have done. Now let us stop it.

  “Withdraw the tools. Put yourself apart. Cut every spiritual connection with the parasite, every emotional tie, and every practical cooperation. Cooperation with them on their terms (those of collectivism) is not cooperation, but surrender—the voluntary offer to be beaten. Stop it. Face them for what they are. And let them learn what you are. ”

  “Carry to your personal life the same principles on which you function in your creative life. All of you live on the premise of one kind of universe when you work—and of quite a different kind in every part of your existence outside of work.”

  The above is the actual secret, key and definition of Roark. He was the embodiment of the perfect man acting consistently on the right moral principle. That moral principle (the mortality of independence) is most eloquently obvious in creative work, and actually in every kind of work; this is proper, since work (creation, production, achievement, purposeful activity) is man’s primary and greatest function. But the same principle applies to all of a man’s life and activities—personal, social, emotional, etc. Roark functioned consistently and consciously on that principle.

  The actual case of the genius is often the tragedy of [an internal] civil war: the principles of the creator in his work, the principles of the second-hander in every other aspect of his life. Why? All the reasons Galt states above, plus the fact that no consistent morality of the creator had ever been formulated. This is what has made geniuses so tortured and so tragic, when they should have been the ecstatic representatives of humanity. The world is responsible for torturing them? Yes—but that torture would be easy to bear, if the genius had not brought upon himself the torture within. It is he who does the world’s dirty work against himself. Otherwise, the pain would go only down to a certain point—and the genius would triumph, essentially, even if locked in a jail cell. The world is responsible for the [external] torture of the genius—and as a cause or source of the much greater torture which he imposes on himself by his wrong conception of the world.

  Now it is this aspect of genius which I must show—not the pure, consistent genius that Roark is—but the divided victim which most geniuses have been. John Galt is the Roark in the story, but the others are not, and it is against the exploitation by the world, particularly this spiritual exploitation, that Galt teaches them to strike.

  Characters needed

  John Galt—energy. Activity, competence, initiative, ingenuity, and above all intelligence. Independent rational judgment. The man who conquers nature, the man who imposes his purpose on nature. Therefore, Galt is an inventor, a practical scientist, a man who faces the material world of science as an adventurer faces an unexplored continent, or as a pioneer faced the wilderness—something to use, to conquer, to turn to his own purposes. In relation to the creators—he is the avenger. (He is “the motor of the world.”)

  A man who is the most tragic victim of collectivist exploitation. He is the one who finds it so hard to break the ties. Hank Rearden—possibly a great, self-made industrialist, torn by the naivete of his own generosity.

  The martyred artist. The composer (Dietrich Gerhardt, who supports his own torturers); the girl-writer. [AR replaced Gerhardt with the somewhat different character of Richard Halley.]

  The great man made into a parasite in his private life (or made miserable). A man who thinks he must pay a price for selfishness.

  The great man who refuses to function and is destroying himself.

  Probably a minor character.

  The genius who accepts anything if only he’d be left free to function.

  This is Dietrich Gerhardt.

  The young girl who supports a whole family (or the honest kind of tough worker like Mike). The industrialist’s secretary. The worker who fights against Taggart and for Rearden. (She understands the issue.)

  The philosopher. A kind of Ortega y Gasset—vaguely. A kind of Aristotle if he came back to life today. Or even Thomas Aquinas.

  The farmer. A man of action [who opposes] the parasites in the most basic, simplest terms.

  Dagny’s employee. The ship owner who sank his ships rather than let them be nationalized (probably an Englishman). (Gerald Hastings) The priest. Father (medieval name), who is the last of the strikers. He withdraws the moral sanction from the world of the parasites. (He represents the last stand for pity.)

  The traitor. The man in-between who has both potentialities, could go both ways, tries to see both sides, attempting a compromise. He turns out to be the one most destructive to the side of the creators, the one contributing most to the parasites—which he himself cannot stand, therefore he destroys himself. (He accomplishes James Taggart’s triumph over him.) Stan Winslow. (He is also an example of the two potentialities in the lesser man.)

  The man who goes insane on the idea of charity—a kind of “Dostoyevsky.”

  The average man. The actual in-between, who goes to the good in a society of producers, to the bad in a society of parasites. He can be an older executive of TT—who, at the end, realizes the horror of his position.

  The man who makes a virtue of evil—who claims that his lack of conviction is a virtue, a sign of some sort of breadth of vision: “To have convictions is to wear blinders.” The damn fool confuses a view of the opinions of others with a view of reality.

  The mystic of parasitism—another “Mr. Smith” of Washington.

  James Taggart’s “best friend,” “pull,” and guide.

  James Taggart’s wife (“the Cinderella girl”). She may be an example of the average woman going to pieces without spiritual guidance (and going through hell with J.T.).

  The man corroded by envy of genius—because he knows that his miserable little achievement is swamped out by the magnificent achievement of the genius. He knows enough to recognize the difference—yet his conclusion is that the genius must be destroyed to protect him. That means, by his own definition, that the best must be destroyed for the sake of the worst. This is the monstrous kind of second-hander’s selfishness—the primary consideration here being in the others and in measuring one’s value by comparison. He considers his own talent worthless, because the talent of the genius is greater—therefore, to be best, he must destroy the genius; his standard of perfection is not absolute, but relative, he wants to do, not the best possible, but the best others will see. ([Note added later:] No.

  The man who does this has no “little” achievement—whatever he has is stolen.)

  This [latter] man against Galt in the final climax is a good possibility. His most revealing line: “The genius destroys the individuality of the lesser men.” (?!) (But the god-damn “lesser men” feed on the genius—and that’s why they hate him. This is the fable of the pig and the oak tree.) [In the fable, the pig uproots the oak tree to get the acorns, thus destroying his source of food.]

  If the “lesser men” don’t want to imitate or follow the genius—then he can’t destroy their “individuality.” But if they do want to follow, if it’s to their advantage—then what is it that they resent? Obviously—the impression in the eyes of others. They become “followers,” not “great innovators” in the eyes of others. And what “others” does he want to fool? “Lesser men” or “geniuses”? Both, of course, and, above all, himself.

  No—not quite. One type simply wants to steal; the other—this type—wants himself and others brought down. (Or are both motives intermixed?) This is the man who has a direct interest in the destruction of genius—steal their achievements, take the credit for your two cents’ worth of “improvement,” and destroy them, so nobody can challenge you. And then look for another victim.

  The line-up so far:

  The creators:

  The parasites: James Taggart

  The industrialist’s wife

  The industrialist’s mistress and other friends

  A “head of the State”—on the order of Truman [President at the time

  of these notes]

  Businessmen on the order of Bobbs-Merrill

  The in-between: Eddie Willers (to the good)

  Stan Winslow (to the bad)

  The man of charity (to the very bad)

  The strikers (in order of importance): John Galt

  Francisco d‘Anconia

  Ragnar Danneskjöld

  The philosopher

  The composer

  Gerald Hastings (the ship owner)

  Have characters (or incidents or both) dramatize a world in which: the best has been turned into a source of evil (Danneskjöld); competence is the source of failure (the young engineer or the girl-writer); life energy is the source of destruction (Francisco d‘Anconia); the capacity for joy is the source of the most terrible suffering (the composer, the girl-writer, the industrialist).

  “This is what we have done. Now let us stop it.”

  Here, in effect, the pattern is this: when men refuse to live according to the principles of the good, the principles proper to them, the best among them are forced to turn against them, to become a danger, an enemy, a source of evil to them. (Because the good has been declared to be the evil.) In a proper society, Danneskjöld would have been a Columbus, the source of infinite benefit to lesser men; in a society of collectivism, he is forced to become a smuggler. Nothing will make him act against his own nature; he will rather act against mankind and all their laws. Danneskjöld doesn’t even bother to argue about it; he just acts. (This is important.)

  April II, 1946

  The worst victim: the industrialist (probably steel): self-made, extremely active, extremely generous, extremely naive.

  His wife: a decadent society bitch—neither too beautiful, nor too rich, nor too well-born, but some of all of it. She does not need his prestige or money—her sole aim in life is to keep him down spiritually, to snub and ridicule him, destroy his every personal aspiration, humble him so that she may feel her own personal superiority through the sense of crushing a giant.

  His sister: a clever, charming, and empty bitch who uses him unmercifully in every way—socially, professionally, financially—under guise of her “understanding.” Her one concern is always to make him feel that she gives him more than she receives, to keep him thinking himself “under obligation”—[she does] this by means of the “spiritual,” as against his gifts which she considers “grossly material.”