Some contrasting quotes in The Fountainhead on various themes. Sometimes I noticed a sentence or paragraph talking about the same theme as another, and sometimes I noticed a sentence written in a very similar way to another sentence. I noticed the first one below regarding “that which proceeds from man’s independent ego,” and was curious how many other interesting contrasts I could find fairly quickly. Mostly it’s contrasting Toohey vs. Roark but other people say stuff too.
That Which Proceeds From the Ego
Toohey:
In spiritual matters there is a simple, infallible test: everything that proceeds from the ego is evil; everything that proceeds from love for others is good.”
Roark:
The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.
An Average Drawn Upon…
Toohey:
Judgment, Peter? Not judgment, but public polls. An average drawn upon zeroes—since no individuality will be permitted.
Roark:
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.
Here, Roark emphasizes the fundamental role of the individual in an agreement upon a group of men. Toohey wants to wipe out the individual, and casts them as “zeroes”.
BTW a public poll drawn upon people in the sort of authoritarian society Toohey wants would actually be worthless as a poll of the public, except as propaganda. Either people would be too afraid to express their actual opinion, and the poll would therefore be invalid, or the people would actually have been brainwashed by the government propaganda and would just repeat the leaders’ opinions back to them, in which case it’s not really an independent “public” that’s being polled.
Individual Minds vs. the Collective
Toohey friend:
“It’s stupid to talk about personal choice,” said Eve Layton. “It’s old-fashioned. There’s no such thing as a person. There’s only a collective entity. It’s self-evident.”
Ellsworth Toohey smiled and said nothing.
Toohey:
“Speaking anatomically—and perhaps otherwise—the heart is our most valuable organ. The brain is a superstition.”
Roark:
“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.
Service
Toohey:
“Service is the only badge of nobility. I see nothing offensive in the conception of fertilizer as the highest symbol of man’s destiny: it is fertilizer that produces wheat and roses.”
Roark:
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 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.
Insulting Others By Implication
Toohey:
“A man braver than his brothers insults them by implication.”
Dominique Francon, writing one of her dual-meaning columns:
“… AND THERE IT WILL STAND, AS A MONUMENT TO nothing but the egotism of Mr. Enright and of Mr. Roark. It will stand between a row of brownstone tenements on one side and the tanks of a gashouse on the other. This, perhaps, is not an accident, but a testimonial to fate’s sense of fitness. No other setting could bring out so eloquently the essential insolence of this building. It will rise as a mockery to all the structures of the city and to the men who built them. Our structures are meaningless and false; this building will make them more so. But the contrast will not be to its advantage. By creating the contrast it will have made itself a part of the great ineptitude, its most ludicrous part. If a ray of light falls into a pigsty, it is the ray that shows us the muck and it is the ray that is offensive. Our structures have the great advantage of obscurity and timidity. Besides, they suit us. The Enright House is bright and bold. So is a feather-boa. It will attract attention—but only to the immense audacity of Mr. Roark’s conceit. When this building is erected, it will be a wound on the face of our city. A wound, too, is colorful.”
Sharing
Toohey:
Let us aspire to no virtue which cannot be shared.
Roark:
We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
Rulers of Men
Toohey:
Peter, my poor old friend, I’m the most selfless man you’ve ever known. I have less independence than you, whom I just forced to sell your soul. You’ve used people at least for the sake of what you could get from them for yourself, I want nothing for myself. I use people for the sake of what I can do to them. It’s my only function and satisfaction. I have no private purpose. I want power.
Roark:
“Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They 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.
They basically agree on this one.
Servility of the Spirit
Toohey:
“To achieve virtue in the absolute sense,” said Ellsworth Toohey, “a man must be willing to take the foulest crimes upon his soul—for the sake of his brothers. To mortify the flesh is nothing. To mortify the soul is the only act of virtue. So you think you love the broad mass of mankind? You know nothing of love. You give two bucks to a strike fund and you think you’ve done your duty? You poor fools! No gift is worth a damn, unless it’s the most precious thing you’ve got. Give your soul. To a lie? Yes, if others believe it. To deceit? Yes, if others need it. To treachery, knavery, crime? Yes! To whatever it is that seems lowest and vilest in your eyes. Only when you can feel contempt for your own priceless little ego, only then can you achieve the true, broad peace of selflessness, the merging of your spirit with the vast collective spirit of mankind. There is no room for the love of others within the tight, crowded miser’s hole of a private ego. Be empty in order to be filled. ‘He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.’ The opium peddlers of the church had something there, but they didn’t know what they had. Self-abnegation? Yes, my friends, by all means. But one doesn’t abnegate by keeping one’s self pure and proud of its own purity. The sacrifice that includes the destruction of one’s soul—ah, but what am I talking about? This is only for heroes to grasp and to achieve.”
Roark:
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.