Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [293]
“You ought to know, Mr. Rearden. You’re one of the last moral men left to the world.”
Rearden chuckled in bitter amusement. “I’ve been called just about everything but that. And you’re wrong. You have no idea how wrong.”
“Are you sure?”
“I ought to know. Moral? What on earth made you say it?”
Francisco pointed to the mills beyond the window. “This.”
For a long moment, Rearden looked at him without moving, then asked only, “What do you mean?”
“If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in material form—there it is. Look at it, Mr. Rearden. Every girder of it, every pipe, wire and valve was put there by a choice in answer to the question: right or wrong? You had to choose right and you had to choose the best within your knowledge—the best for your purpose, which was to make steel—and then move on and extend the knowledge, and do better, and still better, with your purpose as your standard of value. You had to act on your own judgment, you had to have the capacity to judge, the courage to stand on the verdict of your mind, and the purest, the most ruthless consecration to the rule of doing right, of doing the best, the utmost best possible to you. Nothing could have made you act against your judgment, and you would have rejected as wrong—as evil—any man who attempted to tell you that the best way to heat a furnace was to fill it with ice. Millions of men, an entire nation, were not able to deter you from producing Rearden Metal—because you had the knowledge of its superlative value and the power which such knowledge gives. But what I wonder about, Mr. Rearden, is why you live by one code of principles when you deal with nature and by another when you deal with men?”
Rearden’s eyes were fixed on him so intently that the question came slowly, as if the effort to pronounce it were a distraction: “What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you hold to the purpose of your life as clearly and rigidly as you hold to the purpose of your mills?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have judged every brick within this place by its value to the goal of making steel. Have you been as strict about the goal which your work and your steel are serving? What do you wish to achieve by giving your life to the making of steel? By what standard of value do you judge your days? For instance, why did you spend ten years of exacting effort to produce Rearden Metal?”
Rearden looked away, the slight, slumping movement of his shoulders like a sigh of release and disappointment. “If you have to ask that, then you wouldn’t understand.”
“If I told you that I understand it, but you don.‘t—would you throw me out of here?”
“I should have thrown you out of here anyway—so go ahead, tell me what you mean.”
“Are you proud of the rail of the John Gait Line?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the best rail ever made.”
“Why did you make it?”
“In order to make money.”
“There were many easier ways to make money. Why did you choose the hardest?”
“You said it in your speech at Taggart’s wedding: in order to exchange my best effort for the best effort of others.”
“If that was your purpose, have you achieved it?”
A beat of time vanished in a heavy drop of silence. “No,” said Rearden.
“Have you made any money?”
“No.”
“When you strain your energy to its utmost in order to produce the best, do you expect to be rewarded for it or punished?” Rearden did not answer. “By every standard of decency, of honor, of justice known to you—are you convinced that you should have been rewarded for it?”
“Yes,” said Rearden, his voice low.
“Then if you were punished, instead—what sort of code have you accepted?”
Rearden did not answer.
“It is generally assumed,” said Francisco, “that living in a human society makes one’s life much easier and safer than if one were left alone to struggle against nature on a desert island. Now wherever there is a man who needs or uses metal in any way—Rearden Metal has made his life easier for him. Has it made yours easier for you?”
“No,” said Rearden, his voice low.
“Has it left your life as it was before you produced the Metal?