The Journals of Ayn Rand (127 page)

Man is an entity of mind and body, an indivisible union of two elements: of consciousness and matter. Matter is that which one perceives, consciousness is that which perceives it; your fundamental act of perception is an indivisible whole consisting of both; to deny, to [separate] or to equate them is to contradict the nature of your perception, to contradict the axiom of existence, to contradict your basic definitions and to invalidate whatever concepts you might attempt to hold thereafter.

Your consciousness is that which you know—and are alone to know-by direct perception. It is that indivisible unit where knowledge and being are one, it is your “I,” it is the self which distinguishes you from all else in the universe. No consciousness can perceive another consciousness, only the results of its actions in material form, since only matter is an object of perception, and consciousness is the subject, perceivable by its nature only to itself. To perceive the consciousness, the “I,” of another would mean to become that other “I”—a contradiction in terms; to speak of souls perceiving one another is a denial of your “I,” of perception, of consciousness, of matter. The “I” is the irreducible unit of life.

Just as life is the integrating element which organizes matter into a living cell, the element which distinguishes an organism from the unstructured mass of inorganic matter—so consciousness, an attribute of life, directs the actions of the organism to use, to shape, to realign matter for the purpose of maintaining its existence.

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, the life-keeper of your body. Your body is a machine, your consciousness—your
mind
—is its driver; and that which you call your emotions is the union of the two, the product of the integrating mechanism by which your mind controls your body.

Man has wrested existence from the mystic demons, but not consciousness—material reality, but not his mind. Men still look at consciousness as savages looked at material nature. Men have progressed in material production, but have not progressed in spirit—because the first was the province of reason, but the second is still the province of faith and emotions. There has been no
moral
progress, because the tool of all progress-the mind—was banished from morality.

PART 5

15

The three metaphysical fundamentals with which a human consciousness has to deal are: existence, consciousness—and the consciousness of other people.

The crucial decision that a man makes is: in which category does he place the consciousness of others—in external existence or in his own consciousness? The first is the proper process of a rational man. The second means that the consciousness of others becomes a factor in the mind’s process of judgment; it becomes, not an external fact, but an x factor by means of which facts are to be judged; not that which the mind perceives, but that by means of which it does the perceiving. This is the root of the “epistemological” corruption of a human consciousness.

Example: A rational man thinks: “Two plus two equals four.” A second-hander thinks: “Two plus two plus
x
equals four—maybe, the
x
permitting.” The
x
stands for the unknown and unknowable decision of the consciousness of others.

Question to investigate:
These three fundamentals are probably the three premises which determine a man’s psychological “epistemology.”
Is there a special method of thinking that a man will employ according to the premises he has formed about these three fundamentals?
And, as sub-category: in relation to his own consciousness, is there a crucial premise formed by a man about
his thinking and his emotions?
Is this premise another determining factor in the thinking method that a man will employ? [...]

Next assignment:
Define more fully and specifically what we know so far about methods of thinking.

What is the exact role of the conscious mind (of the “spark”) as driver and as spectator of the material provided by the subconscious?

What is the exact nature of the subconscious as the repository of stored knowledge—and as the automatic creator of emotions?

What is the exact role of emotions in a process of thinking? (Are they selectors, integrators, blockers—or all of these, according to one’s premises?)

What is the exact nature of the process of integration?

What is the nature of the state which a man takes as certainty? How does he know that he knows? (Or is certainty possible only to a rational man? If so, what takes its place in a corrupted consciousness?)

Is the question of “
certainty
” related to the question of “
values
”? My lead here is the fact that when I attempt to calculate a chess game my mind gives up on a very violent feeling of “What’s the use?” [...] (Later question: Does [a man] become immoral (non-valuing) because he has formed the premise of a fluid reality—or does he form the premise of a fluid reality because he has rejected his value-setting power? I suspect that it is the first. I also suspect that one’s concepts of
reality
and of
values
are inseparable corollaries. This, I think, is the point at which the independent mind and the sovereign value-setter are united.)

In relation to emotions:
The two fundamentals are pleasure and pain. In psychological motives they become: love or fear (love for values, ambition for pleasure, i.e., happiness—or—fear of pain, escape from pain). (This leads to: activity or passivity, achievement of the positive or escape from the negative.) An important
moral
lead is the question: Is a man motivated by fear in any part of his psychology? He is immoral to the extent of his fear motivations—immoral in the primary sense of morality: fear leads to the refusal to think, to perceive reality. (Fear as an “epistemological” factor.)

 

 

The first two metaphysical fundamentals which a human consciousness has to grasp and deal with are:
existence
and
consciousness.
Within each of these two, there are two fundamentals which a man grasps with his earliest concepts:
existence
is divided into facts (reality) and
people
(other people’s views of reality)
—consciousness
is divided into
mind
and
emotions
(thinking and feeling).

If a man is unable to integrate these four concepts (reality, people, thinking, feeling) in a proper, rational manner, if he finds himself torn by conflicts among these four—
then
what he sacrifices and what he chooses to preserve determines his basic character, his metaphysics and his epistemology. [...]

The proper pattern of a rational man in regard to the four fundamentals is as follows: Mind above emotions (but not in the sense of emotional suppression, only in the sense of knowing that the mind is the source of emotions)—and
reality
[above people] (a single, indivisible reality to be perceived and judged by one’s own mind). The specific distinction of a rational man is the fact that the consciousness of others
as an epistemological factor
does not exist for him, that he holds no such concept, that a conflict such as
his
view of reality versus the view of
others
has never occurred to him epistemologically and has never been an issue within his own processes of thought. A rational man regards others and their views as [external] facts of existence, to be judged by his mind—and
not
as an inner fact, to be part of his judgment. A man of
unbreached consciousness
is one who has never allowed the opinions of others to become an epistemological issue, that is, to shake his confidence in the validity of his own perceptions and of his own rational judgment.

 

 

Assignment:
The next and most urgent step in this inquiry should be a full, exact and objective definition of:

The crucial error of the man who chooses “emotions above mind” in the sub-basement consists of acquiring an “epistemology” that makes emotions part of his thinking process in the specific role of a
judge of values
and, later, almost the judge of truth and facts (or
the meaning
of facts) and, therefore, the judge of certainty in any given thought process. While to a rational man the answer to a problem is a factual identification or explanation of reality—to a sub-basement emotionalist the answer to a problem is the achievement of a happy or positive emotion.

The formula for this crucial difference is as follows:

An emotionalist’s identification of values is:
“The good is that which will make me happy. ”

A rational man’s identification of values is:
“I will be made happy by that which is good.
”

Thereafter, the rational man will be incapable of emotional response without knowing the nature of that to which he is responding. In complex situations, he might need time to identify
all
the elements of his particular emotional response (since an emotional sum is calculated by the subconscious much faster than a conscious process of thought could do it), but the identification will always be available to him, open to his conscious mind, and his emotions will always correspond to his conscious standard of values. He might be mistaken in any given situation about his conscious identification of the facts involved—but he will never be off his standard of values, there will never be a contradiction between his emotional response and his conscious, rational, stated standard of values. He will never be in love with a person whom he consciously despises, nor be resentful of a person whom he consciously admires.