The Fountainhead (110 page)

“You look at him. I hate his guts.”

“I’ve looked at him—at what’s left of him—and it’s helped me to understand. He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It’s his ego that he’s betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish.”

“That’s the pattern most people follow.”

“Yes! And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don’t see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose—to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury—he’s completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They’re second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that means nothing at all to him—and the people who listen and don’t give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers.”

“If I were Ellsworth Toohey, I’d say: aren’t you making out a case against selfishness? Aren’t they all acting on a selfish motive—to be noticed, liked, admired?”

“—by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance—the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought—they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.”

“I think Toohey understands that. That’s what helps him spread his vicious nonsense. Just weakness and cowardice. It’s so easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It’s easier to donate a few thousands to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence—such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”

“That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: ‘Is this true?’ They ask: ‘Is this what others think is true?’ Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation—anchored to nothing. That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people. That’s what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It’s everywhere and nowhere and you can’t reason with him. He’s not open to reason. You can’t speak to him—he can’t hear. You’re tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. Steve Mallory couldn’t define the monster, but he knew. That’s the drooling beast he fears. The second-hander.”

“I think your second-handers understand this, try as they might not to admit it to themselves. Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. By instinct. There’s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They’ve got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them—because they don’t exist within him and that’s the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. Look back at your own life, Howard, and at the people you’ve met. They know. They’re afraid. You’re a reproach.”

“That’s because some sense of dignity always remains in them. They’re still human beings. But they’ve been taught to seek themselves in others. Yet no man can achieve the kind of absolute humility that would need no self-esteem in any form. He wouldn’t survive. So after centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn’t have conceived. And now, to cure a world perishing from selflessness, we’re asked to destroy the self. Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You’ve wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion—prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ‘This is what I wanted because
I
wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.’ Then he wonders why he’s unhappy. Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven’t even got a word for the quality I mean—for the self-sufficiency of man’s spirit. It’s difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they’ve come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I’ve always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I’ve always recognized it at once—and it’s the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.”

“I’m glad you admit that you have friends.”

“I even admit that I love them. But I couldn’t love them if they were my chief reason for living. Do you notice that Peter Keating hasn’t a single friend left? Do you see why? If one doesn’t respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.”

“To hell with Peter Keating. I’m thinking of you—and your friends.”

Roark smiled. “Gail, if this boat were sinking, I’d give my life to save you. Not because it’s any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t live for you.”

“Howard, what were the reasons and standards?”

Roark looked at him and realized that he had said all the things he had tried not to say to Wynand. He answered:

“That you weren’t born to be a second-hander.”

Wynand smiled. He heard the sentence—and nothing else.

Afterward, when Wynand had gone below to his cabin, Roark remained alone on deck. He stood at the rail, staring out at the ocean, at nothing.

He thought: I haven’t mentioned to him the worst second-hander of all—the man who goes after power.

I
T WAS APRIL WHEN ROARK AND WYNAND RETURNED TO THE CITY. The skyscrapers looked pink against the blue sky, an incongruous shade of porcelain on masses of stone. There were small tufts of green on the trees in the streets.

Roark went to his office. His staff shook hands with him and he saw the strain of smiles self-consciously repressed, until a young boy burst out: “What the hell! Why can’t we say how glad we are to see you back, boss?” Roark laughed. “Go ahead. I can’t tell you how damn glad I am to be back.” Then he sat on a table in the drafting room, while they all reported to him on the past three months, interrupting one another; he played with a ruler in his hands, not noticing it, like a man with the feel of his farm’s soil under his fingers, after an absence.

In the afternoon, alone at his desk, he opened a newspaper. He had not seen a newspaper for three months. He noticed an item about the construction of Cortlandt Homes. He saw the line: “Peter Keating, architect. Gordon L. Prescott and Augustus Webb, associate designers.”

He sat very still.

That evening, he went to see Cortlandt.

The first building was almost completed. It stood alone on the large, empty tract. The workers had left for the day; a small light showed in the shack of the night watchman. The building had the skeleton of what Roark had designed, with the remnants of ten different breeds piled on the lovely symmetry of the bones. He saw the economy of plan preserved, but the expense of incomprehensible features added; the variety of modeled masses gone, replaced by the monotony of brutish cubes; a new wing added, with a vaulted roof, bulging out of a wall like a tumor, containing a gymnasium; strings of balconies added, made of metal stripes painted a violent blue; corner windows without purpose; an angle cut off for a useless door, with a round metal awning supported by a pole, like a haberdashery in the Broadway district; three vertical bands of brick, leading from nowhere to nowhere; the general style of what the profession called “Bronx Modern”; a panel of bas-relief over the main entrance, representing a mass of muscle which could be discerned as either three or four bodies, one of them with an arm raised, holding a screwdriver.

There were white crosses on the fresh panes of glass in the windows, and it looked appropriate, like an error x’ed out of existence. There was a band of red in the sky, to the west, beyond Manhattan, and the buildings of the city rose straight and black against it.

Roark stood across the space of the future road before the first house of Cortlandt. He stood straight, the muscles of his throat pulled, his wrists held down and away from his body, as he would have stood before a firing squad.

 

No one could tell how it had happened. There had been no deliberate intention behind it. It had just happened.

First, Toohey told Keating one morning that Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb would be put on the payroll as associate designers. “What do you care, Peter? It won’t come out of your fee. It won’t cut your prestige at all, since you’re the big boss. They won’t be much more than your draftsmen. All I want is to give the boys a boost. It will help their reputation, to be tagged with this project in some way. I’m very interested in building up their reputation.”

“But what for? There’s nothing for them to do. It’s all done.”

“Oh, any kind of last-minute drafting. Save time for your own staff. You can share the expense with them. Don’t be a hog.”

Toohey had told the truth; he had no other purpose in mind.

Keating could not discover what connections Prescott and Webb possessed, with whom, in what office, on what terms—among the dozens of officials involved in the project. The entanglement of responsibility was such that no one could be quite certain of anyone’s authority. It was clear only that Prescott and Webb had friends, and that Keating could not keep them off the job.

The changes began with the gymnasium. The lady in charge of tenant selection demanded a gymnasium. She was a social worker and her task was to end with the opening of the project. She acquired a permanent job by getting herself appointed Director of Social Recreation for Cortlandt. No gymnasium had been provided in the original plans; there were two schools and a Y.M.C.A. within walking distance. She declared that this was an outrage against the children of the poor. Prescott and Webb supplied the gymnasium. Other changes followed, of a purely esthetic nature. Extras piled on the cost of construction so carefully devised for economy. The Director of Social Recreation departed for Washington to discuss the matter of a Little Theater and a Meeting Hall she wished added to the next two buildings of Cortlandt.

The changes in the drawings came gradually, a few at a time. The orders okaying the changes came from headquarters. “But we’re ready to start!” cried Keating. “What the hell,” drawled Gus Webb, “set ‘em back just a coupla thousand bucks more, that’s all.” “Now as to the balconies,” said Gordon L. Prescott, “they lend a certain modern style. You don’t want the damn thing to look so bare. It’s depressing. Besides, you don’t understand psychology. The people who’ll live here are used to sitting out on fire-escapes. They love it. They’ll miss it. You gotta give ’em a place to sit on in the fresh air.... The cost? Hell, if you’re so damn worried about the cost, I’ve got an idea where we can save plenty. We’ll do without closet doors. What do they need doors for on closets? It’s old-fashioned.” All the closet doors were omitted.