Excerpt from Ayn Rands Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of The Fountainhead: 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 Roarks 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 seemd closer to the meaning I intended (*Websters Daily Use Dictionary*, 1933). (Modern philosophers, however, are guiltier than lexicographers in regard to these two terms.) The possibly misleading sentence is in Roarks 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 Roarks 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 mans 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 paricular content of religious ehtics, but the abstraction ethics, the realm of values, mans code of good and evil, with the emotional connotations of height, uplift, nobility, reverence, grandeur, which pertain to the realm of mans 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: Youre a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark--in your own way. I can see that in your buildings. Thats true, said Roark. In the context of that scene, however, the meaning is clear: it is Roarks 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. Religions monopoly in the field of ethics has made it exteremely 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 mans 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 ones knees. Sacred means superior to and not-to-be-toucned-by and 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 uplifing 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 mans 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 the highest level of mans 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 ehtics in full and merely substitute society for God as the beneficiary of mans 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 shaped by whims--not Gods whims, but mans or societys. These neo-mystics are not man-worshipers; they are merely the secularizers of as profound a hatred for man as that of their avowedly mystic predecessors. A cruder variant of the same hatred is represented by those concrete-bound, statistical mentalities who--unable to grasp the meaning of mans volition--declare that man cannot be an object of worship, since they have never encountered any specimens of humanity who deserved it. The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see mans highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature--and struggle never to let him discover otherwise. It is important here to remember that the only direct, introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself. More specifically, the essential division between these two camps is: those dedicated to the *exaltation* of mans self-esteem and the *sacredness* of his happiness on earth--and those determined not to allow either to become possible. The majority of mankind spend their lives and psychological energy in the middle, swinging between these two, struggling not to allow the issue to be named. This does not change the nature of the issue. Perhaps the best way to communicate The Fountainheads sense of life is by means of the quotation which had stood at the head of my manuscript, but which I removed from the final, published book. With this opportunity to explain it, I am glad to bring it back. I removed it, because of my profound disagreement with the philosophy of its author, Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophically, Nietzshe is a mystic and an irrationalist. His metaphysics consists of a somewhat Byronic and mystically malevolent universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to will, or feeling or instinct of blood or innate virtues of character. But, as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for mans greatness, expressed in emotion, *not* intellectual terms. This is especially true of the quotation I had chosen. I could not endorse its literal meaning: it proclaims an indefensible tenet--psycholgical determinism. But if one takes it as a poetic projection of an emotional experience (and if, intellectually, one subsitutes the concept of an acquired basic premise for the concept of an innate fundamental certainty), then that quotation communicates the inner state of an exalted self-esteem--and sums up the emotional consequences of which The Fountainhead provides the rational, philosophical base: It is not the works, but the *belief* which is here decisive and determines the order of rank--to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning,--it is some fundamental certainty which a noble sould has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--*The noble soul has reverence for itself.*-- (Friedrich Nietzshe, *Beyond Good and Evil.*) This view of man has rarely been expressed in human history. Today, it is virtually non-existent. Yet this is the view with which--in various degrees of longing, wisfulness, passion and agonized confusion--the best of mankinds youth start out in life. It is not even a view, for most of them, but a foggy, groping, undefined sense of enormous expectation, the sense that ones life is important, that great achievements are within ones capacity, and that great things lie ahead. It is not in the nature of man--nor of any living entity--to start out by giving up, by spitting in ones own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the fast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning ones mind; security, of abandoning ones values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of mans nature and of lifes potential. There are a few guideposts to find. The Fountainheads is one of them. This is one of the cardinal reasons of The Fountainheads lasting apeal: it is a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming mans glory, showing how much is possible. It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of mans proper stature--and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning--and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls. Ayn Rand New York, May 1968
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 22:08:49 +0000
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