| 11.9 |
Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I
am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am
not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars. |
| 11.10 |
I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before! |
| 11.11 |
I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune
of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the
winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my
thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom. |
| 11.12 |
I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I
ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's
soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet. |
| 11.13 |
I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of
them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more
than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to
any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my
love. But honor is a thing to be earned. |
| 11.14 |
I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters.
And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and
respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when
we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his
spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and
undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only
beyond his holy threshold. |
| 11.15 |
For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as
a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's
soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth,
the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie. |
| 11.16 |
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to
stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that
which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by
which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak
steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of
the sages. |
| 11.17 |
What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it?
What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my
freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my
masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? |
| 11.18 |
But I am done with this creed of corruption. |
| 11.19 |
I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.
| 12.15 |
These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door of
glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of
men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long
story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom.
But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a
man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be
free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. |
| 12.16 |
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains.
Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was
enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their
chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which
neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter
what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right
on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of the freedom
for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. |
| 12.17[*] |
But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower than his savage beginning. |
| 12.18 |
What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from
men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The
worship of the word "We." |
| 12.19 |
When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries
collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come from the
thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages, from the depth
of some one spirit, such spirit as existed but for its own sake. Those
men who survived -- those eager to obey, eager to live for one another,
since they had nothing else to vindicate them -- those men could
neither carry on, nor preserve what they had received. Thus did all
thought, all science, all wisdom perish on earth. Thus did men -- men
with nothing to offer save their great numbers -- lose the steel
towers, the flying ships, the power wires, all the things they had not
created and could never keep. Perhaps, later, some men had been born
with the mind and the courage to recover these things which were lost;
perhaps these men came before the Councils of Scholars. They were
answered as I have been answered -- and for the same reasons. |
| 12.20 |
But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of
transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and
went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is
hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up
and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have
lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted
to be brought upon them. |
| 12.21 |
Perhaps, in those days, there were a few among men, a few of clear
sight and clean soul, who refused to surrender that word. What agony
must have been theirs before that which they saw coming and could not
stop! Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no
heed to their warning. And they, these few, fought a hopeless battle,
and they perished with their banners smeared by their own blood. And
they chose to perish, for they knew. To them, I send my salute across
the centuries, and my pity. |
| 12.22 |
Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to tell
them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their
night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost.
For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the
darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of
man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken.
It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man,
not men. |
| 12.23 |
Here, on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall
build our new land and our fort. And it will become as the heart of the
earth, lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating louder each day.
And word of it will reach every corner of the earth. And the roads of
the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world's
blood to my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my
brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me. And
the day will come when I shall break all the chains of the earth, and
raze the cities of the enslaved, and my home will become the capital of
a world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake. |
| 12.24 |
For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my
chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life.
For his honor. |
| 12.25 |
And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the
word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not
die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on
this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. |
| 12.26 |
The sacred word: |
| |
EGO Anthem by Ayn Rand
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