April 30, 1946

  Note on the basic theme: The basic process of a man’s life goes like this: his thinking determines his desires, his desires determine his actions. (Thinking, of course, is present all along the line, at every step and stage. His desires are a combination of thought and emotion (the “production” and the “consumption” sides being involved), and all his emotions are determined by his thinking, most particularly by his basic premises.)

  So the process is: the right thinking creates the right desires, which create the proper activity. One of the aspects of man’s activity must be material production, in order to feed himself and exist. Feeding himself, the economic activity, is just one of the aspects of the fact that he has to give a physical expression or form to his spiritual aims, desires, and needs. This is the basic pattern, or “circle,” of man’s life on earth: the spirit (thought) through the material activity (production) to the satisfaction of his spiritual desires (emotions). (He must eat in order to think, but he must first think in order to eat.)

  The wrong thinking leads to the wrong desires, which lead to the wrong activity—and a wrong activity means that man functions improperly in the material realm of production and cannot even feed himself. A spiritual error (wrong thinking) makes it impossible for him to handle the physical world or to preserve his body.

  Now, on the general scale of mankind as a whole, here is how the pattern is repeated: the right philosophy leads to the right ethics, which lead to the right politics, which lead to the right economics. The wrong philosophy creates the wrong ethics, which create the wrong politics, which create the wrong economics (they stop production dead).

  Therefore, here is what men must be told: if, through improper thinking due to inadequate mental [capacity], you start down the wrong way—you need the creators, the best minds, to correct your errors and show you the right way. If, through inability to do any basic thinking at all, you find yourselves open to scoundrels and parasites who push you toward destruction—you need the creators to save you and show you the right way. If you are one of the scoundrels, those who consciously devise systems of thought as tools of exploitation, you still need the creators. By the nature of your own systems, you can exist only so long as the creators are still there to be fought and looted. The day of your victory will be the day of your own destruction.

  Pattern for James Taggart and TT (following the general “Pattern of Disintegration ”)

  First stage. An issue at TT in which James Taggart stalls, then hides behind Dagny and another executive, leaving the two decisions to them (particularly objecting to Dagny’s decision). Taggart’s stalling (and timidity, playing-safe) hampers both lines of endeavor. Dagny wins, the executive fails. Taggart takes credit for Dagny’s achievement, and fires the executive, ruining him. The achievement comes out half-botched, due to the interference.

  Second stage. An issue at TT in which James Taggart discovers the responsibility of being a “great man.” He makes an arbitrary decision, then creates a deliberate victim to ruin (“just in case”), and also leans on one of his pet parasites. The new executive, the victim, is in a position where he has to say “yes” to Taggart. But it doesn’t work, the buck passing spreads to the bottom. The issue ends in a real disaster (the first major one). Taggart wriggles out of it, ruining the chosen victim and some very minor employee (almost the equivalent of an office boy).

  Third stage. TT can’t get top executives. Lesser disasters are accelerating, like a fabric cracking to pieces. Taggart depends on his suppliers, instead of vice versa. (The dependence on dependents.) An issue at TT in which Taggart’s best friend in a contributing business (one of the top parasites, one of these suppliers) gets caught in criminal negligence, is publicly exposed and ruined. His crash is a bad blow to TT. (Here Taggart runs his business for the sake of his suppliers—like a publisher who would publish “for critics.”)

  Fourth stage. Taggart brings in a “criminal type” executive to TT. An issue in which the executive aims at nothing but personal looting (blatantly and cynically double-crossing TT). Taggart knows it—and can’t fire him.

  Fifth stage. The issue which destroys TT.

  May 3, 1946

  Ideas from research:

  If possible, tie Galt to transportation work, i.e., transportation science. (Ragnar Danneskjöld owns a plane designed by Galt, handmade in the valley. Its design attracts Dagny’s attention; this is one of the reasons she follows Danneskjöld. The plane could even be called the John Galt. The engine could be one that would be extremely valuable if applied to railroad use.) [This is the first mention of Galt inventing a new type of motor.]

  For Dagny’s childhood: she tells Eddie Willers that the rail lines vanishing at the horizon are held in a man’s hand, like reins; they come from one man’s hand. What man? She doesn’t know. No, not her father, not any big man in the office. Someday she wants to meet that man. How will she recognize him? She will.

  Use the grass growing between the tracks as a sign of disintegration.

  The progressive neglect of maintenance work, the relaxation of vigilance, causes minor defects that lead to major disasters. Here we see James Taggart’s (and all the parasites‘) psychology of living in and for the moment, like a savage or an animal; he is incapable of long-range planning, foresight or continuity, just as he is incapable of integration as a person.

  A major flood (like the 1938 one) can be used—only the railroad affected does not recover, and neither do the communities it served. There is no power of recovery in that society.

  The examples of following routine and precedent with disastrous results—since every particular problem on a railroad is new and different, to be solved on the basis of the particular, specific case.

  [Show] a section of the country killed off when TT closes a branch of their network. Just as new railroads created new sections, brought prosperity to semi-deserted, barren stretches of primitive wilderness—so now we see the reverse process, the failure and shrinking of railroads kills whole sections, creates abandoned ghost-towns, ghost-ranches, ghost-mines, and forces the handful of remaining inhabitants in such areas back into primitive subsistence, poverty, hard [manual] labor—back to savagery, but a desolate savagery, without hope. There are such dying sections (“blighted areas”) when the story opens; they are taken for granted—they have been spreading slowly for years. They are the first creepers of the advancing jungle. But there must also be a specific plot sequence showing the destruction of such a section-through the railroad failures traceable to James Taggart (this will be one of the turning points of TT’s disintegration).

  May 4, 1946

  Philosophical Notes on the Creative Process

  The creative process is, in a way, the reverse of the learning process. It’s the other part of the circle [that goes] from the concrete to the abstract to the concrete. Abstractions are derived from the concrete—and then applied to the concrete in order to achieve one’s own purpose. The process of learning has as its purpose to acquire knowledge. The process of creation is the process of applying one’s knowledge to whatever purpose one wishes to achieve. Knowledge precedes creation; without knowledge of some sort (no matter how general) one can’t choose and set the purpose one wishes to accomplish. So the first, basic purpose (a kind of first sub-purpose) preceding every other specific purpose is the purpose of gaining knowledge. (Before you decide to create, you must know what you want to create and how you must [proceed] in order to create it.)

  One may stop at the purpose of acquiring knowledge; theoretical scientists and philosophers do. But it seems to me (I have no clear definitions here as yet) that the complete cycle of a man’s life includes the application of his knowledge to his particular goal. Knowledge per se is the base of all activities; it seems to be only a part of a completed cycle. Yes, the function of the theoretical scientist and the abstract philosopher are more crucially, basically important than that of the applied scientist (inventor) or the practical moralist; these latter men rest their achievements on those of the former (and if one man combines both functions, the one of discovering new knowledge precedes that of applying it). But one cannot quite say that the discovery of new knowledge is more important than the application of existing knowledge; “important” here would imply the question: “Important to whom?” and involves a question of values.

  Nor can one say that a theoretical scientist is necessarily a man of greater ability than the applied scientist; both functions require a process of new, original thought. One can say only that for any given step in the discovery of new knowledge and its use, the discovery precedes the use; the correct theory precedes the practical application. And also, one can say that the theoretical scientist or the philosopher perform the most obviously first-hand act of thinking, of rational deduction—drawing, from concrete experience, a new abstraction, the statement of new knowledge, never drawn by any other person before.

  Still, it seems to me—no matter what great, original first-hand effort of thought is required in these functions—that theoretical science or abstract philosophy are “unfinished” spheres of human endeavor. (I said “it seems to me”: I may be wrong; this requires more thought and the most careful definitions.) The complete sphere must lead to man. It’s another completed cycle: from man to abstract knowledge to the satisfaction of man’s purposes and desires. Man’s essential nature is that of creator—within the reality of an objective universe; before he can act or create, he must study this universe (this is the process of acquiring knowledge); then, he uses his knowledge to set his purpose and to achieve it (this is the process of creation).

  In my own case, I seem to be both a theoretical philosopher and a fiction writer. But it is the last that interests me most; the first is only the means to the last; the absolutely necessary means, but only the means; the fiction story is the end. Without an understanding and statement of the right philosophical principle, I cannot create the right story; but the discovery of the principle interests me only as the discovery of the proper knowledge to be used for my life purpose, and my life purpose is the creation of the kind of world (people and events) that I like, i.e., that represents human perfection. Philosophical knowledge is necessary in order to define human perfection, but I do not care to stop at the definition; I want to use it, to apply it in my work (in my personal life, too—but the core, center and purpose of my personal life, of my whole life, is my work).

  This is why, I think, the idea of writing a philosophical non-nction book bored me; in such a book, the purpose would actually be to teach others, to present my ideas to them. In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then, as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, and to the extent that, they can.

  It may be said that the first purpose of a philosophical book is the clarification or statement of your new knowledge to and for yourself; and then, as a secondary step, the offering of your knowledge to others. But here is the difference, as far as I am concerned: I have to acquire and state to myself the new philosophical knowledge or principle I use in order to write a fiction story as its embodiment and illustration; I do not care to write a story with a theme [based on] someone else’s philosophy (because those philosophies are wrong); to this extent, I am an abstract philosopher. I want to present the perfect man and his perfect life—and I must also discover my own philosophical statement and definition of this perfection. But when and if I have discovered such new knowledge, I am not interested in stating it in its abstract, general form, i.e., as knowledge; I am interested in applying it, i.e., in stating it in the concrete form of men and events, in the form of a fiction story. This last is my final purpose, my end; the philosophical knowledge or discovery is only the means to it. (I state the knowledge to myself, anyway; but I choose the final form of it, the expression, in the completed cycle that leads back to man.)

  I wonder to what extent I represent a peculiar phenomenon in this respect; I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being. Anyway, this should be my lead for the character of John Galt; he, too, is a combination of an abstract philosopher and a practical inventor; the thinker and the man of action, together.

  Now, back to the process of creation. In learning, we draw an abstraction from concrete objects and events. In creating, we make our own concrete objects and events out of the abstraction; we bring the abstraction down and back to its specific meaning, to the concrete; but the abstraction has helped us to make the kind of concrete we want. It has helped us to create—to re-shape the world as we wish it to be for our purposes.

  Example: I draw the abstraction “individualism” from observing men, their life, society, the universe. I translate that abstraction into a concrete figure, a specific man: Roark. [I do this by] a complex process of making abstractions concrete in details, characteristics, attributes, events; in each step and in the total result the essential process is the same: from the concrete to an abstract principle to the kind of concrete reality I want.

  Thinking, i.e., the rational process, is involved in both functions: in the activity of acquiring knowledge (getting the abstractions) and in the activity of creating (translating the abstraction back into the concrete).

  The same principle (or completed cycle) applies to all of man’s activities, not only the specifically creative ones such as art or invention. (I wonder whether this is the point where there is an indication that every activity of man is creative, in basic principle and essence. This is to be thought out further.) In order to think at all, man must be able to perform this cycle: he must know how to see an abstraction in the concrete and the concrete in an abstraction, and always relate one to the other. He must be able to derive an abstraction from the concrete (either by his own new discovery, or by knowledge presented to him by others but rationally understood and accepted by him), then be able to apply this abstraction both as a guide for his specific actions and as a standard by which to judge the specific ideas or actions of others.

  Example: a man who has understood and accepted the abstract principle of unalienable individual rights cannot then go about advocating compulsory labor conscription or nationalization of property. Those who do have not performed either part of the cycle: neither the abstraction nor the translating of the abstraction into the concrete. The cycle is unbreakable; no part of it can be of any use, until and unless the cycle is completed (that is, clear in a man’s mind, in his rational grasp). (A broken electric circuit does not function in the separate parts; it must be unbroken or there is no current; the parts, in this case, are of no use whatever, of no relevance to the matter of having an electric current.) This is the basic pattern and essence of the process of thinking.

  Now, in the basic pattern of man’s life as a whole, there might be the indication of a similar cycle: man must think, first and above all, but he must also act. (Keep in mind here that thinking is the base and constant accompaniment or determinant of all action.) By action—in this basic sense—I mean the setting of one’s purpose (that’s the creation of one’s desire) and then the achievement of that purpose (and the satisfaction of that desire). A theoretical scientist (or a philosopher) thinks; his purpose is the gaining of knowledge; when he discovers a new answer, a new step in knowledge, he has achieved his purpose. But the process of gaining knowledge underlies all other activities; so I wonder about the [possibility that] the purely abstract thinker is actually incomplete (since there is no abstract without the concrete, and no concrete (for man) without the abstract).

  Incidentally, as an observation: if creative fiction writing is a process of translating an abstraction into the concrete, there are three possible grades of such writing: translating an old abstraction (known theme) through the medium of old fiction means, i.e., through characters, events, or situations used before for that same purpose (this is most of the popular trash); translating an old abstraction through new, original fiction means (this is most of the good literature); or creating a new, original abstraction and translating it through new, original means. This last, as far as I know, is only me—my kind of fiction writing. May God forgive me (metaphor!) if this is mistaken conceit! As near as I can now see it, it isn’t. (A fourth possibility—translating a new abstraction through old means—is impossible; if the abstraction is new, there can be no means used by anyone else before to translate it.)

  12

  FINAL PREPARATIONS

  After the notes presented in Chapter II, AR took a six-week break from writing in her journal. She spent much of the time that spring thinking about the plot while strolling the grounds of her ranch home in California. The present chapter contains the notes she wrote in the summer of 1946, after this break and before beginning to write the novel.

  AR had thus worked full-time on Atlas Shrugged for only five months (April through August, 1946) when she completed her outline and was ready to start writing. This is a remarkably short time; the corresponding period for The Fountainhead was two and a half years. There are two main reasons for the difference. First, less research was required—the knowledge of railroads and steel mills needed for Atlas Shrugged was much less extensive than the knowledge of architecture needed for The Fountainhead. Second, she had far less difficulty in working out the plot.

  More than 80 percent of her notes from the summer of 1946 are presented here. I have omitted some research notes in which she simply copied factual material from a book, Economic Geography, by R. H. Whitbeck and V. C. Finch. I have also omitted a plot outline of the last part of the novel, which merely summarizes events described in earlier notes. Finally, I have omitted several pages of “Notes on Notes,” in which AR catalogued the contents of her journal.