The Journals of Ayn Rand (56 page)

Man may be justly proud of his natural endowments (if they are there objectively, i.e., rationally), such as physical beauty, physical strength, a great mind, good health. But all of these are merely his material or his tools; his self-respect must be based, not on these attributes, but on what he does with them. His self-respect must be based on his actions—on that which proceeds from him. His survival depends on the
proper
kind of action. His appreciation of himself must be on the same principle. Every animal (and even plants) exhibits self-respect or a kind of self-pride—an attitude of considering itself valuable, i.e., good. And it exhibits [this attitude] in direct proportion to its fitness for survival. Man’s fitness for survival lies in his rational faculty. The survival of the fittest—as applied to man? It is the survival of the best mind; the best mind is the most independent; the most independent man is the most moral man. If we understood this correctly—the survival of
the fittest
does mean
of the best.
But
the best
—for man—is not brute force, nor cunning, nor slyness, nor any quality that depends upon the existence (and sacrifice) of other men in order to be exercised.

If a man says: “But I realize that my natural endowments are mediocre—shall I then suffer, be ashamed, have an inferiority complex?” The answer is: “In the basic, crucial sphere, the sphere of morality and action, it is not your endowments that matter, but what you do with them.” It is here that all men are free and equal, regardless of natural gifts. You can be, in your own modest sphere, as good morally as the genius is in his—
if
you live by the same rules. Find your goal within yourself, in whatever work you are honestly capable of performing. Never make others your prime goal. Demand nothing from others as an unearned gift and grant them nothing unearned. Live by your own rational judgments. Be independent in whatever judgments you hold or actions you undertake, and do not venture beyond your own capacity, into spheres where you’ll have to become a parasite and a second-hander. You’ll be surprised how decent and wonderful a human being you’ll become, and how much honest, legitimate human affection and appreciation you’ll get from others.

As to material rewards, you’ll get what you deserve, what you have produced. The greater rewards received by men of greater ability do not concern you—
because they were not taken from you.
There is no point and no sense in your hating the man of superior ability because he has more material wealth than you have. It is his ability that produced the wealth. If he had no such ability or if you destroyed him—it still would not make
you
able to produce that wealth. All you can do is rob him. His ability does not hamper yours, it merely surpasses it. And so do the material rewards. There is no point in your hating a beautiful woman for being more beautiful than you are; if she lost her beauty or if you killed her, it would not make you more beautiful. You’ll say, but men would consider me more beautiful then, without the comparison? Not necessarily. Standards of beauty, like any standards, are set by a certain ideal of perfection, usually personal to each man. You will not be any nearer to perfection by eliminating a rival who was nearer.

No, moral virtue is not its only reward. But it cannot give you rewards you have neither earned nor deserved. Moral virtue will give you just what you deserve—and this is quite a great deal. (Particularly if you choose to make it a great deal and exert the needed effort.) Moral virtue will give you justice. And more than that neither men nor nature can give you.

If men’s desperate rebellion against the objective world, reason, and justice is, at [root], a rebellion against the shortcomings of their own natural endowments, if men scream so much against the “injustice” of being born without some special great talent or desirable faculty—
why don’t they exercise such faculties as they have, instead?
Most of their unhappiness in this line (with the possible exception of physical beauty) comes from second-handedness. They don’t want to write—they want the fame, money, and prestige of a writer. If they had an actual, personal desire to write, i.e., if they had something to say—without any second-handedness involved, no desire to impress, nor any desire to re-hash some plagiarized ideas—
they would have the talent.
Men usually have the talent for that which they want to do—
if they really want to do it
, i.e., if their primary motive is personal, not second-hand.

The pattern of spiritual human relationship under my code of ethics has the form of a sale—value for value received; the pattern under the code of altruism is that of graft—of a bribe.

Advice to people on what to do under my ethics: name your action by its actual name, i.e., be conscious at any moment of what it is you’re doing. Above all, be conscious of what you’re doing in the long run, of your overall meaning and goal. People think from moment to moment—they don’t connect—they have not acquired the idea of a whole life. That is why they whine in middle age: “What was it all about?” (They exist in the manner of consciousness of an animal.)

Make a note of the way in which people actually lose all capacity to think when they appoint themselves as thinkers for others, as molders or expressers of “public opinion.” They do make sense in their specific, individual and selfish job. But there is a peculiar, special kind of rottenness that [takes hold] in them the moment they begin to think in or for “the public.”

This applies both to such cases as a reader who has good independent judgment until he becomes an editor—and to such cases as when a man has to defend his views in public. This last may be due either to the innocent fact of being unprepared and not connecting new ideas fast enough—
or
to the much more vicious fact that a man feels no necessity to have any “wider” convictions (philosophical, social, or political), but feels he must have them as window-dressing, so whatever nonsense he spouts, he spouts only to make a “cultured” impression on the listener. He doesn’t want to believe, he only wants to convince you he believes something. Now
this
is real second-handedness in operation; abstract convictions, ethics, ideals, philosophies are [regarded as] only a social convention, only a means to an end. That is the real absence of an ego.

How do those people exist? Not too well. Obviously they’re not happy and they’re running from themselves. But can anything be taught to them? Can they be shown their own emptiness? This is hard to answer. I suppose, not until they
want
to see it. Not until some form of suffering makes them question themselves. The thing that puzzles me is only: how do those people exist at all, without realizing that central emptiness? Isn’t it something they should discover for themselves and at once? The truth is probably that they have some most peculiar, logically twisted substitute or excuse or justification. The thing that bothers me here is: how can people live in inconsistency? The immediate answer would be: because it’s so difficult to be consistent and rational (and besides they have been trained not to be). Therefore, they take inconsistency as a law of existence, they’re bewildered, they can’t untangle things—but they have to go on living, so they let it go at that.

The main difference between me and them is that I try to keep my thinking straight and give my complete, honest, interested attention to any intellectual argument. They either don’t want to try, or are indifferent, or actually resent it when brought face to face with the necessity to think and connect. I try to live consciously, from the basic principle on up to every detail. They live, essentially, by chance. The most important questions are the ones they won’t or can’t face.

 

 

Knowledge grows from basic premises like a plant from a seed. The seed is like a basic premise in which all the details and consequences of the future plant are contained—and only a certain plant can grow from a certain seed. Once you have accepted a basic premise, you will have to follow and accept all the consequences, because they
are
in the seed. You have no power to change the nature of the universe, the nature of matter or its laws; and you have no power to change the nature of a logical sequence. But where is your freedom and the field of your free will? In exercising [your reason] to understand [nature] and use it as material to fulfill your purpose. You set the goal and the meaning; the field of choice and possibilities is immense; the only necessity involved is that you use the material as it is and your tool (reason) as it is—that you understand them for what they are before you choose or achieve a purpose.

Do not call it a “limit.” The basic fact of reality is a “limit”—the fact of existence, which presupposes an entity, which means a thing differentiated by certain intrinsic, essential attributes from that which it is not. “To be” implies a “limit”—a distinction from that which is not. If you demanded “freedom” from the natural world—you would demand, in effect, an undifferentiated chaos, the non-existence of entities, actually more than death—the annihilation of the conception of the possibility of living.

We apply reason to the material world, but not to the spiritual, not to ourselves. The material world gives us an objective standard, a starting point, a solid fact, the something from which we have to proceed—since we cannot create something out of nothing, or base something on nothing. There is no such standard in the spiritual world. Yet the rational faculty should be that starting point. And a moral code should be that standard.

In dealing with physical nature each man is an independent judge: he will consider a car good if the car runs—and he will make sure that he sees the car running. But in the spiritual world men are second-handers: they place the quality of judgment within the consciousness of others, being lost and unsure within their own. So we have the paradox that in physical matters the actual value and performance of the product is the standard (people will buy a car if it is a good car), but in spiritual matters (precisely in the realm of greatest, absolute individualism) the collective counting of noses is the standard (a book is good if people buy it). Physical values are thus ethical (based on value-judgments) and personal—but spiritual values are non-moral and “commercial” in the most vulgar sense of the word. Physical values become an end in themselves, moral values a means to an end. (There is here a strange circle. Our rational faculty is the means of obtaining satisfaction from the physical world. But the satisfaction is spiritual, since the physical is only a means to the satisfaction of our desires—and of more than our physical desires.)