Key ideas: Written in 1948. “The philosophy which you preach is the exact opposite of mine” (Ayn Rand)
To Robert Spencer Carr, a science fiction author
November 14, 1948
Dear Mr. Carr:
…
Your theme and your philosophical ideas leave me stumped. I cannot understand why you liked The Fountainhead and how you could have chosen me as any kind of inspiration. The philosophy which you preach is the exact opposite of mine. Your heroine is supposed to represent the ideal of selflessness and altruism. The theme of The Fountainhead is a denunciation of altruism and self-sacrificing as the greatest evil conceivable. My philosophy is based on the idea that man is not a sacrificial animal, that it is man’s moral right and duty to exist for the sake of his own happiness. The character of Cristina in your book is the symbol of that which I consider as the total evil. In my book, her spiritual counterpart is Ellsworth Toohey. …
The thing that struck me as the most revealing sentence in your book, as a kind of personal cry and as a clue to your own tragedy, is the question on Page 424—“Why else do men go on searching after they have lost their hope of finding anything, were it not from this secret ache where something indescribably precious has somehow slipped away, and must be recaptured?”
I think I can answer you.
The indescribably precious thing which men have lost is this earth. All men have it at first, in their childhood, perhaps before they learn to speak, before contact with others corrupts their minds. A child starts with the idea that this is a wonderful world in which he will be happy and that he has a moral right to be happy. The monstrous conceptions of turning himself into a sacrificial animal and of happiness being guilt never occur to him.
Then, later, every idea he absorbs from the adults leads to a damnation of himself and of this earth. Yet, since he is a human being, he cannot accept completely the inhumanity which is taught to him. He retains a faint memory of the paradise which he has given up and lost. I am one of the very few people who have never lost it. This—I think—is what you drew strength from in The Fountainhead. And, if so, I am very happy that you did. …