Howard Roark on Trial

Roark got up. "Your Honor, I shall call no witnesses. This will be my testimony and my summation."

"Take the oath."

Roark took the oath. He stood by the steps of the witness stand. The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he arouse in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.

The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one's own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name--fear--need--dependence-- hatred?

Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own minds. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd--and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone's approval?-- does it matter?-- am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free-- free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room.

It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak.

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures--because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer--because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

"No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane, or a building--that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.

"His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

"The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power-- that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself.

"And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons--a process of thought. 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.

"But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. it is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the process of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man con use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

"We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the nest step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.

"Nothing is given to man on earth . Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways-- by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.

"The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.

"The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.

"The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.

"The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.

"Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self.

"No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.

"The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality--the man who lives to serve others--is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism.

"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution--or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.

"Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer--in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive.

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge, or act. These are functions of the self.

"Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative-and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism--the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal--under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.

"This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.

"The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rest upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil.

"The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man--and he asks no man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.

"Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

"In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him a commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner.

"No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his individual product and his individual property. This is the only pattern for proper co-operation among men.

"The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.

"A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule--alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander.

"Rulers of men are not egoists. They create nothing. The exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.

"But men were taught to regard second-handers--tyrants, emperors, dictators--as exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.

"From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.

""The creator--denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited--went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.

"The 'common good' of a collective--a race, a class, a state-- was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.

"The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is--Hands off!

"Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man's right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else's. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience.

"It is an ancient conflict. Men have come close to the truth, but it was destroyed each time and one civilization fell after another. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

"Now, in our age, collectivism, the rule of the second-hander and second-rater, the ancient monster, has broken loose and is running amuck. It has brought men to a level of intellectual indecency never equaled on earth. It has reached a scale of horror without precedent. It has poisoned every mind. It has swallowed most of Europe. It is engulfing our country.

"I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live.

"Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt.

"I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it.

"I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building supersede all rights and that I had no claim to stand against it.

"I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I designed it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid.

"I do not blame Peter Keating. He was helpless. He had a contract with his employers. It was ignored. He had a promise that the structure he offered would be built as designed. The promise was broken. The love of a man for the integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are now considered a vague intangible and an unessential. You have heard the prosecutor say that. Why was the building disfigured? For no reason. Such acts never have any reason, unless it's the vanity of some second-handers who feel they have a right to anyone's property, spiritual or material. Who permitted them to do it? No particular man among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit it or to stop it. No one was responsible. No one can be held to account. Such is the nature of all collective action.

"I did not receive the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what they need from me. they wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could do it to their satisfaction. I could and did. they took the benefit of my work and made me contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. i do not contribute gifts of this nature.

"It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned, in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them a right to my work. that their need constituted a claim on my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the second-hander's credo now swallowing the world.

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

"I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

"It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

"I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man's creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who're destroying the world.

"I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.

"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, i wish to give the ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.

"My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend--and to the battles he won. To every creator who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To a man who doesn't want to be named, but who is sitting in this courtroom and knows that I am speaking of him."

Roark stood, his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted--as he stood in an unfinished building. Later, when he was seated again at the defense table, many men in the room felt as if they still saw him standing; one moment's picture that would not be replaced.

The picture remained in their minds through the long legal discussions that followed. They heard the judge state to the prosecutor that the defendant had, in effect, changed his plea: he had admitted his act, but had not pleaded guilty of the crime; an issue of temporary legal insanity was raised; it was up to the jury to decide whether the defendant knew the nature and quality of his act, or, if he did, whether the defendant knew that the act was wrong. The prosecutor raised no objection; there was an odd silence in the room; he felt certain that he had won his case already. He made his closing address. No one remembered what he said. The judge gave his instruction to the jury. The jury rose and left the courtroom.

People moved, preparing to depart, without haste, in expectation of many hours of waiting. Wynand, at the back of the room, and Dominique, in the front, sat without moving.

A bailiff stepped to Roark's side to escort him out. Roark stood by the defense table. His eyes went to Dominique, then to Wynand. He turned and followed the bailiff.

He had reached the door when there was a sharp crack of sound, and a space of blank silence before people realized that it was a knock at the closed door of the jury room. The jury had reached a verdict.

Those who had been on their feet remained standing, frozen, until the judge returned to the bench. The jury filed into the courtroom.

"The prisoner will rise and face the jury," said the clerk of the court.

Howard Roark stepped forward and stood facing the jury. At the back of the room, Gail Wynand got up and stood also.

"Mr. Foreman, have you reached a verdict?"

"We have."

"What is your verdict?"

"Not guilty."

The first movement of Roark's head was not to look at the city in the window, at the judge or at Dominique. He looked at Wynand.

Wynand turned sharply and walked out. He was the first man to leave the room.

Gail Wynand

Wynand is a powerful publisher of vulgar tabloids that oppose everything Roark stands for. But he also, like Dominique, loves man’s noblest achievements, and owns a private gallery of great artworks. Wynand is a man of mixed premises. He rules his private life by means of his own judgment; consequently, it is filled with the items and persons that he, not his public, values. He loves Dominique, Roark, Roark’s buildings, the beautiful art filling his gallery. Nobody—not his mother, Ellsworth Toohey, his public—tells Wynand how to conduct his personal life. Only his own thinking does this. But in his professional life, he is an egregious panderer. The Banner does not represent his values and thinking, but that of the most vulgar tastes of society. Ironically, the paper does not truly become Wynand’s until he defends Roark in the Cortlandt case; only then does The Banner reflect Wynand’s standards and values.

The story of Gail Wynand is tragedy. He is a man with the mind, talent, and initiative to do great things, but he brings disaster on himself by means of his own errors. Growing up in the harsh slums of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, he makes a fatal error, holding that, in this world, a man either rules or is ruled, conquers or is conquered. He believes that the majority of human beings are corrupt dolts—a mindless herd—and that the only way for the few intelligent and competent individuals to survive is by gaining power. He gives the public what it wants, attaining wealth and political influence along the way. But he betrays his own mind in the process.

Wynand is a man of exalted values, who panders to the debased standards of the crowd. Ultimately, the contradiction destroys him. When he defends Roark in The Banner, his thinking for the first time governs his paper’s policy. He writes brilliant editorials defending the lone geniuses who stood against the men of their times, great individuals who, though persecuted by their societies, were vindicated by posterity. For the first time, Wynand uses his paper to defend the noble ideals he treasures. But he miscalculates. Those to whom he panders cannot appreciate a noble ideal, and those who can appreciate a noble ideal have long since stopped taking Wynand seriously. The paper comes back unread. Wynand had thought he had power. He believed that his papers molded public opinion. Bitterly, he discovers that his papers never belonged to him, but to the crowd—and that public opinion dictated his policies, not vice versa. Wynand discovers belatedly that, in seeking power, a man delivers himself to the very individuals he seeks to rule. He learns that a ruler must placate those ruled, and that his life is then dominated by the values of his subjects. If a ruler attempts to follow his own conscience—if he decides to flout the wishes of the herd—then the herd turns on him, throwing off his “authority” and turning to another. Wynand discovers that a power-seeker has no power—and that his own life was based on a lie.

-------

Roark loves Dominique for a deeper reason than her beauty and elegance, for something even rarer than her brilliant mind: Her idealistic devotion to the nobility of man matches his own. Despite her pessimism, her alliance with Toohey, and her marriage to Keating, the value that her love adds to Roark’s life is incalculable. Roark now has a soul mate and lover who shares his deepest views of life and man. The depth of spiritual closeness they achieve is shown throughout the story, but one memorable scene stands out.

The Stoddard Temple is Dominique’s worst fear realized. Roark designs a masterpiece that the world, in its evil and its ignorance, destroys. Her suffering is far worse than his. She comes to his room on the evening that Stoddard announces his lawsuit. She says nothing, but Roark knows at a glance what she feels, and that she feels it for him. “‘You’re wrong,’ he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. ‘I don’t feel that.’” This dialogue between lovers illustrates that their intimacy is such that a wordless glance suffices to inform each of the other’s deepest thoughts and emotions. Roark knows that despite Dominique’s marriage to Keating, he will not lose her. They are bound to each other by deeper ties than a wedding vow.

Dominique marries Keating as an act of spiritual anesthesia. It is her idealism—her commitment to Roark and to all manifestations of human stature—that condemns her to suffering in a world that rejects her values. She seeks to kill off in herself (or at least put to sleep) her capacity to respond to sights of man’s greatness. Keating is an unprincipled man, utterly devoid of the noble values that Dominique treasures. By immersing herself in Keating’s life—by being a dutiful wife, by arranging his social calendar, by smiling at men of influence, by sleeping with him—she seeks to lose her attitude of man-worship. Dominique, a woman capable of loving only the equivalents of Michelangelo, in unbearable pain living in a world that repudiates such exalted standards, seeks to rid her spirit of its capacity for reverence by filling her life with the individual least deserving of it. But, as Nietzsche said, nobility of soul “is not to be lost.” Dominique’s quest is hopeless. Her reverence for man’s greatness is the essence of her soul; it is ineradicable. This is the deepest reason that Roark cannot lose her.

---------

Gail Wynand was twenty when he fell in love. He had known
      everything there was to know about sex since the age of thirteen
      He had had many girls. He never spoke of love, created no
      romantic illusion and treated the whole matter as a simple animal
      transaction; but at this he was an expert  and women could tell
      it, just by looking at him. The girl with whom he fell in love had
      an exquisite beauty, a beauty to be worshiped, not desired. She
      was fragile and silent. Her face told of the lovely mysteries
      within her, left unexpressed.
       She became Gail Wynanand's mistress. He allowed himself the
      weakness of being happy. He would have married her at once
      had she mentioned it. But they said little to each other. He felt
      that everything was understood between them.
       One evening he spoke. Sitting at her feet, his face raised to
      her, he allowed his soul to be heard. "My darling, anything you
      wish, anything I am, anything I can ever be . .. That's what i
      want to offer you not the things I'll get for you, but the thing
      in me that will make me able to get them. That thing a man
      can't renounce it but I want to renounce it so that it will be
      yours so that it will be in your service only for you: The girl
      smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie
      Kelly?"
       He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. he
      never saw that girl again. Gail Wynand, who prided himself
      never needing a lesson twice, did not fall in love again in the
      years that followed.