The Fountainhead p. 630-640

Ellsworth comes to Peter Keating’s house as he has not left and has not seen anyone since Howard has been arrested. He did this to ensure he would not betray Howard, and exactly why Ellsworth came to see him. He pressures him and after some resistance of what little will Peter managed to still have, he gives Ellsworth the paper that Roark signed with him over the contract. And Ellsworth has a mixed response to this, “You’re a complete success, Peter, as far as I’m concerned. But as times I have to want to turn away from the sight of my successes” (Rand, 633).

The rest of this chapter was the elaboration of what Ellsworth truly wants out of all of this, the masterminding behind all the organizations and groups he helps forms but draws no power from. He wants to control the world by the conscience of the people. “I shall rule…You. The world. It’s only a matter of discovering the lever. If you can learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind” (Rand, 635). He also elaborates on the means to this end of his. By making selflessness a virtue, it kills the aspirations of people, considering that, “Not a single [man] has ever achieved [selflessness] and not a single one ever will” (Rand, 635), and that by promoting the things that people should not follow, they then find people worshiping an ideal they cannot follow and make themselves feel insignificant and then willing to follow others who appear to be selfless, such as Ellsworth. He also preaches the use of serving and sacrifices as virtuous, and points out how this helps gain power for a man like him as well. “It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And he intends to be the master” (Rand, 637). He elaborates on many other aspects of how he feels the will of people can be bent and molded, but all have the common denominator by glorifying things that have not value to oneself but in the eyes of another, and no one is truly happy, “Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient…Happy men are free men” (Rand, 636), and so by making people feel that happiness is only achievable in the serving of others, it breaks their spirit because they become unhappy on something people tell them should make them feel good.

The concept in general of what current society holds sacred calls many values of society into question. We have many systems where the many help the few, both within regions and around the world, for the sole purpose of helping our fellow man. We also glorify lifestyles of loving and caring, but not in the sense of making oneself happy by what one wants, but by a standard of morals that society tells us is what we should want and desire. This issue of where one’s morals come from; if one’s morals and ideals do not come from within, does it not stand to reason that one is without morals at all? No man’s conviction should change based on the opinions of others if they are truly his, but rarely in society is this the case. To succeed in any political or public light, one must make their ideas embody what everyone else wants them to be, regardless of what they truly believe. Many people who hold their convictions will not move through society or survive. Galileo had to renounce his works because it went against the church, the strongest power in the world at the time. Darwin was ridiculed for decades for his idea of evolution, which some still argue over today. People will not value ideas by their own worth, but by what everyone else says their worth, and that is one of the biggest problems with our society.