The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 23

See also HAPPINESS; LIFE, RIGHT to; MAN; MORALITY; STANDARD of VALUE; ULTIMATE VALUE; VALUES.

Life, Right to. A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) ["Man's Rights," VOS, 124; pb 93.]

The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.

[Ibid., 129; pb 97.]

The Right of Life means that Man cannot be deprived of his life for the benefit of another man nor of any number of other men.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 5.]

See also INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LIFE.

Linguistic a.n.a.lysis. There is an element of grim irony in the emergence of Linguistic a.n.a.lysis on the philosophical scene. The a.s.sault on man's conceptual faculty has been accelerating since Kant, widening the breach between man's mind and reality. The cognitive function of concepts was undercut by a series of grotesque devices-such, for instance, as the "a.n.a.lytic-synthetic" dichotomy which, by a route of tortuous circ.u.mlocutions and equivocations, leads to the dogma that a "necessarily" true proposition cannot be factual, and a factual proposition cannot be "necessarily" true. The cra.s.s skepticism and epistemological cynicism of Kant's influence have been seeping from the universities to the arts, the sciences, the industries, the legislatures, saturating our culture, decomposing language and thought. If ever there was a need for a Herculean philosophical effort to clean up the Kantian stables-particularly, to redeem language by establishing objective criteria of meaning and definition, which average men could not attempt -the time was now. As if sensing that need, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis came on the scene for the avowed purpose of "clarifying" language-and proceeded to declare that the meaning of concepts is determined in the minds of average men, and that the job of philosophers consists of observing and reporting on how people use words.

The reductio ad absurdum of a long line of mini-Kantians, such as pragmatists and positivists, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis holds that words are an arbitrary social product immune from any principles or standards, an irreducible primary not subject to inquiry about its origin or purpose-and that we can "dissolve" all philosophical problems by "clarifying" the use of these arbitrary, causeless, meaningless sounds which hold ultimate power over reality....

Proceeding from the premise that words (concepts) are created by whim, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis offers us a choice of whims: individual or collective. It declares that there are two kinds of definitions: "stipulative," which may be anything anyone chooses, and "reportive," which are ascertained by polls of popular use.

As reporters, linguistic a.n.a.lysts were accurate: Wittgenstein's theory that a concept refers to a conglomeration of things vaguely tied together by a "family resemblance" is a perfect description of the state of a mind out of focus.

[ITOE, 102.].

Linguistic a.n.a.lysis declares that the ultimate reality is not even percepts, but words, and that words have no specific referents, but mean whatever people want them to mean.... Linguistic a.n.a.lysis is vehemently opposed to ... any kinds of principles or broad generalizations -i.e., to consistency. It is opposed to basic axioms (as "a.n.a.lytic" and "redundant")-i.e., to the necessity of any grounds for one's a.s.sertions. It is opposed to the hierarchical structure of concepts (i.e., to the process of abstraction) and regards any word as an isolated primary (i.e., as a perceptually given concrete). It is opposed to "system-building"-i.e., to the integration of knowledge.

["The Comprachicos," NL, 225.]

Through decades of promulgating such doctrines as Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis, [philosophers] refused to consider the fact that these doctrines would disarm and paralyze the best among men, those who take philosophy seriously, and that they would unleash the worst, those who, scorning philosophy, reason, justice, morality, would have no trouble brushing the disarmed out of the way.... To what sort of problems had [today's philosophers] been giving priority over the problems of politics? Among the papers to be read at that [1969 American Philosophical a.s.sociation (Eastern Division)] convention were: "p.r.o.nouns and Proper Names"-"Can Grammar Be Thought?"-"Propositions as the Only Realities."

["The Chickens' Homecoming," NL, 112.]

It is the claim of Linguistic a.n.a.lysis that its purpose is not the communication of any particular philosophic content, but the training of a student's mind. This is true-in the terrible, butchering sense of a comprachico operation. The detailed discussions of inconsequential minutiae-the discourses on trivia picked at random and in midstream, without base, context or conclusion-the shocks of self-doubt at the professor's sudden revelations of some such fact as the student's inability to define the word "but," which, he claims, proves that they do not understand their own statements-the countering of the question: "What is the meaning of philosophy?" with: "Which sense of 'meaning' do you mean?" followed by a discourse on twelve possible uses of the word "meaning," by which time the question is lost-and, above all, the necessity to shrink one's focus to the range of a flea's, and to keep it there-will cripple the best of minds, if it attempts to comply.

"Mind-training" pertains to psycho-epistemology; it consists in making a mind automatize certain processes, turning them into permanent habits. What habits does Linguistic a.n.a.lysis inculcate? Context-dropping, "concept-stealing," disintegration, purposelessness, the inability to grasp, retain or deal with abstractions. Linguistic a.n.a.lysis is not a philosophy, it is a method of eliminating the capacity for philosophical thought-it is a course in brain-destruction, a systematic attempt to turn a rational animal into an animal unable to reason.

["The Comprachicos," NL, 226.]

See also a.n.a.lYTIC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; GRAMMAR; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); KANT, IMMANUEL; LANGUAGE; LOGICAL POSITIVISM; MEANING (of CONCEPTS); PHILOSOPHY; PRAGMATISM; PRINCIPLES; "STOLEN CONCEPT," FALLACY of; WORDS.

Literature. Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. Man's profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness....

Literature re-creates reality by means of language.... The relation of literature to man's cognitive faculty is obvious: literature re-creates reality by means of words, i.e., concepts. But in order to re-create reality, it is the sensory-perceptual level of man's awareness that literature has to convey conceptually: the reality of concrete, individual men and events, of specific sights, sounds, textures, etc.

All these arts are conceptual in essence, all are products of and addressed to the conceptual level of man's consciousness, and they differ only in their means. Literature starts with concepts and integrates them to percepts-painting, sculpture and architecture start with percepts and integrate them to concepts. The ultimate psycho-epistemological function is the same: a process that integrates man's forms of cognition, unifies his consciousness and clarifies his grasp of reality.

["Art and Cognition," RM, pb 45.]

The most important principle of the esthetics of literature was formulated. by Aristotle, who said that fiction is of greater philosophical importance than history, because "history represents things as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be."

This applies to all forms of literature and most particularly to a form that did not come into existence until twenty-three centuries later: the novel.

A novel is a long, fictional story about human beings and the events of their lives. The four essential attributes of a novel are: Theme-Plot -Characterization-Style.

These are attributes, not separable parts. They can be isolated conceptually for purposes of study, but one must always remember that they are interrelated and that a novel is their sum. (If it is a good novel, it is an indivisible sum.) These four attributes pertain to all forms of literature, i.e., of fiction, with one exception. They pertain to novels, plays, scenarios, librettos, short stories. The single exception is poems. A poem does not have to tell a story; its basic attributes are theme and style.

A novel is the major literary form-in respect to its scope, its inexhaustible potentiality, its almost unlimited freedom (including the freedom from physical limitations of the kind that restrict a stage play) and, most importantly, in respect to the fact that a novel is a purely literary form of art which does not require the intermediary of the performing arts to achieve its ultimate effect.

["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 57; pb 80.]

An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man and of existence. In forming a view of man's nature, a fundamental question one must answer is whether man possesses the faculty of volition-because one's conclusions and evaluations in regard to all the characteristics, requirements and actions of man depend on the answer.

Their opposite answers to this question const.i.tute the respective basic premises of two broad categories of art: Romanticism, which recognizes the existence of man's volition-and Naturalism, which denies it.

["What Is Romanticism?" RM, 81; pb 99.]

Prior to the nineteenth century, literature presented man as a helpless being whose life and actions were determined by forces beyond his control: either by fate and the G.o.ds, as in the Greek tragedies, or by an innate weakness, "a tragic flaw," as in the plays of Shakespeare. Writers regarded man as metaphysically impotent; their basic premise was determinism. On that premise, one could not project what might happen to men; one could only record what did happen-and chronicles were the appropriate literary form of such recording.

Man as a being who possesses the faculty of volition did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century. The novel was his proper literary form-and Romanticism was the great new movement in art. Romanticism saw man as a being able to choose his values, to achieve his goals, to control his own existence. The Romantic writers did not record the events that had happened, but projected the events that should happen; they did not record the choices men had made. but projected the choices men ought to make.

With the resurgence of mysticism and collectivism, in the later part of the nineteenth century, the Romantic novel and the Romantic movement vanished gradually from the cultural scene.

Man's new enemy, in art, was Naturalism. Naturalism rejected the concept of volition and went back to a view of man as a helpless creature determined by forces beyond his control; only now the new ruler of man's destiny was held to be society. The Naturalists proclaimed that values have no power and no place, neither in human life nor in literature, that writers must present men "as they are," which meant: must record whatever they happen to see around them-that they must not p.r.o.nounce value-judgments nor project abstractions, but must content themselves with a faithful transcription, a carbon copy, of any existing concretes.

["The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age," RM, 113; pb 123.]

[The] basic premises of Romanticism and Naturalism (the volition or anti-volition premise) affect all the other aspects of a literary work, such as the choice of theme and the quality of the style, but it is the nature of the story structure-the attribute of plot or plotlessness-that represents the most important difference between them and serves as the main distinguishing characteristic for cla.s.sifying a given work in one category or the other.

["What Is Romanticism?" RM, 83; pb 101.]

The theme of a novel can be conveyed only through the events of the plot, the events of the plot depend on the characterization of the men who enact them-and the characterization cannot be achieved except through the events of the plot, and the plot cannot be constructed without a theme.

This is the kind of integration required by the nature of a novel. And this is why a good novel is an indivisible sum: every scene, sequence and pa.s.sage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.

["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 74; pb 93.]

A cardinal principle of good fiction [is]: the theme and the plot of a novel must be integrated-as thoroughly integrated as mind and body or thought and action in a rational view of man.

["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 63; pb 85.]

In art, and in literature, the end and the means, or the subject and the style, must be worthy of each other.

That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth re-creating in art.

["The Goal of My Writing," RM, 166; pb 166.]

The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.

The typical literary product of such writers-and of their imitators, who possess no style-are so-called "mood-studies," popular among today's literati, which are little pieces conveying nothing but a certain mood. Such pieces are not an art-form, they are merely finger-exercises that never develop into art.

["Basic Principles of Literature." RM, 78; pb 96.]

Now take a look at modern literature.

Man-the nature of man, the metaphysically significant, important, essential in man-is now represented by dipsomaniacs, drug addicts, s.e.xual perverts, homicidal maniacs and psychotics. The subjects of modern literature are such themes as: the hopeless love of a bearded lady for a mongoloid pinhead in a circus side show-or: the problem of a married couple whose child was born with six fingers on her left hand -or: the tragedy of a gentle young man who just can't help murdering strangers in the park, for kicks.

All this is still presented to us under the Naturalistic heading of "a slice of life" or "real life"-but the old slogans have worn thin. The obvious question, to which the heirs of statistical Naturalism have no answer, is: if heroes and geniuses are not to be regarded as representative of mankind, by reason of their numerical rarity, why are freaks and monsters to be regarded as representative? Why are the problems of a bearded lady of greater universal significance than the problems of a genius? Why is the soul of a murderer worth studying, but not the soul of a hero?

["The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age," RM. 115; pb 125.]

If you wonder what is the ultimate destination toward which modern philosophy and modern art are leading you, you may observe its advance symptoms all around us. Observe that literature is returning to the art form of the pre-industrial ages, to the chronicle-that fictionalized biographies of "real" people, of politicians, baseball players or Chicago gangsters, are given preference over works of imaginative fiction, in the theater, in the movies, in television-and that a favored literary form is the doctementary.

["The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age," RM, 118; pb 127.]

Except for the exceptions, there is no literature (and no art) today-in the sense of a broad, vital cultural movement and influence. There are only bewildered imitators with nothing to imitate-and charlatans who rise to split-second notoriety, as they always did in periods of cultural collapse.

Some remnants of Romanticism may still be found in the popular media-but in such a mangled, disfigured form that they achieve the opposite of Romanticism's original purpose.

["What Is Romanticism?" RM, 108; pb 119.]

See also ARISTOTLE; ART; CHARACTERIZATI0N; CLa.s.sICISM; CONCEPTS; DETERMINISM; MODERN ART; NATURALISM; NOVEL; PLOT; PLOT-THEME; POPULAR LITERATURE; PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY; ROMANTICISM; SENSE of LIFE; STYLE; THEME (LITERARY ); THRILLERS.

Lobbying. "Lobbying" is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of government by pressure groups. Its methods range from mere social courtesies and c.o.c.ktail-party or luncheon "friendships" to favors, threats, bribes, blackmail.

["The Pull Peddlers," CUI, 168.]

See also INTERVENTIONISM (ECONOMIC); MIXED ECONOMY; WELFARE STATE.

Logic. All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe ; neither can contradict its own ident.i.ty; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

[GS, FNI, 153; pb 125.]

The fundamental concept of method, the one on which all the others depend, is logic. The distinguishing characteristic of logic (the art of non-contradictory identification) indicates the nature of the actions (actions of consciousness required to achieve a correct identification) and their goal (knowledge)-white omitting the length, complexity or specific steps of the process of logical inference, as well as the nature of the particular cognitive problem involved in any given instance of using logic.

[ITOE, 46.].

"It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." Logic is the art or skill of non-contradictory identification. Logic has a single law, the Law of Ident.i.ty, and its various corollaries. If logic has nothing to do with reality, it means that the Law of Ident.i.ty is inapplicable to reality. If so, then: a. things are not what they are; b. things can be and not be at the same time, in the same respect, i.e., reality is made up of contradictions. If so, by what means did anyone discover it? By illogical means. (This last is for sure.) The purpose of that notion is crudely obvious. Its actual meaning is not: "Logic has nothing to do with reality," but: "I, the speaker, have nothing to do with logic (or with reality)." When people use that catch phrase, they mean either: "It's logical, but I don't choose to be logical" or: "It's logical, but people are not logical, they don't think-and I intend to pander to their irrationality."

["Philosophical Detection," PWNI, 17; pb 15.J Logic is man's method of reaching conclusions ubjectively by deriving them without contradiction from the facts of reality-ultimately, from the evidence provided by man's senses. If men reject logic, then the tie between their mental processes and reality is severed; all cognitive standards are repudiated, and anything goes; any contradiction, on any subject, may be endorsed (and simultaneously rejected) by anyone, as and when he feels like it.

[Leonard Peikoff, "n.a.z.ism and Subjectivism," TO, Feb. 1971, 12.]

Any theory that propounds an opposition between the logical and the empirical, represents a failure to grasp the nature of logic and its role in human cognition. Man's knowledge is not acquired by logic apart from experience or by experience apart from logic, but by the application of logic to experience. All truths are the product of a logical identification of the facts of experience.

Man is born tabula rasa; all his knowledge is based on and derived from the evidence of his senses. To reach the distinctively human level of cognition, man must conceptualize his perceptual data-and conceptualization is a process which is neither automatic nor infallible. Man needs to discover a method to guide this process, if it is to yield conclusions which correspond to the facts of reality-i.e., which represent knowledge. The principle at the base of the proper method is the fundamental principle of metaphysics: the Law of Ident.i.ty. In reality, contradictions cannot exist; in a cognitive process, a contradiction is the proof of an error. Hence the method man must follow: to identify the facts he observes, in a non-contradictory manner. This method is logic -"the art of non-contradictory identification." (Atlas Shrugged.) Logic must be employed at every step of a man's conceptual development, from the formation of his first concepts to the discovery of the most complex scientific laws and theories. Only when a conclusion is based on a non-contradictory identification and integration of all the evidence available at a given time, can it qualify as knowledge.

The failure to recognize that logic is man's method of cognition, has produced a brood of artificial splits and dichotomies which represent restatements of the a.n.a.lytic-synthetic dichotomy from various aspects. Three in particular are prevalent today: logical truth vs. factual truth; the logically possible vs. the empirically possible; and the a priori vs. the a posteriori.

The logical-factual dichotomy opposes truths which are validated "merely" by the use of logic (the a.n.a.lytic ones), and truths which describe the facts of experience (the synthetic ones). Implicit in this dichotomy is the view that logic is a subjective game, a method of manipulating arbitrary symbols, not a method of acquiring knowledge.

It is the use of logic that enables man to determine what is and what is not a fact. To introduce an opposition between the "logical" and the "factual" is to create a split between consciousness and existence, between truths in accordance with man's method of cognition and truths in accordance with the facts of reality. The result of such a dichotomy is that logic is divorced from reality ("Logical truths are empty and conventional")-and reality becomes unknowable ("Factual truths are contingent and uncertain"). This amounts to the claim that man has no method of cognition, i.e., no way of acquiring knowledge.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ITOE, 151.]

See also a.n.a.lYTlC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; ARISTOTLE; AXIOMS; CONTRADICTIONS; EPISTEMOLOGY; IDENt.i.tY; INDUCTION and DEDUCTION; METHOD, CONCEPTS of; MYSTICISM; OBJECTIVITY; PROOF; REASON; VALIDATION.

Logical Positivism. As a defense against the Witch-doctory of Hegel, who claimed universal omniscience, the scientist was offered the combined neo-mystic Witch-doctory and Attila-ism of the Logical Positivists. They a.s.sured him that such concepts as metaphysics or existence or reality or thing or matter or mind are meaningless-let the mystics care whether they exist or not, a scientist does not have to know it; the task of theoretical science is the manipulation of symbols, and scientists are the special elite whose symbols have the magic power of making reality conform to their will ("matter is that which fits mathematical equations"). Knowledge, they said, consists, not of facts, but of words, words unrelated to objects, words of an arbitrary social convention, as an irreducible primary; thus knowledge is merely a matter of manipulating language. The job of scientists, they said, is not the study of reality, but the creation of arbitrary constructs by means of arbitrary sounds, and any construct is as valid as another, since the criterion of validity is only "convenience" and the definition of science is "that which the scientists do." But this omnipotent power, surpa.s.sing the dreams of ancient numerologists or of medieval alchemists, was granted to the scientist by philosophical Attila-ism on two conditions: a. that he never claim certainty for his knowledge, since certainty is unknown to man, and that he claim, instead, "percentages of probability," not troubling himself with such questions as how one calculates percentages of the unknowable; b. that he claim as absolute knowledge the proposition that all values lie outside the sphere of science, that reason is impotent to deal with morality, that moral values are a matter of subjective choice, dictated by one's feelings, not one's mind.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 36; pb 34.]

Ever since Kant divorced reason from reality, his intellectual descendants have been diligently widening the breach. In the name of reason, Pragmatism established a range-of-the-moment view as an enlightened perspective on life, context-dropping as a rule of epistemology, expediency as a principle of morality, and collective subjectivism as a subst.i.tute for metaphysics. Logical Positivism carried it farther and, in the name of reason, elevated the immemorial psycho-epistemology of shyster-lawyers to the status of a scientific epistemological system-by proclaiming that knowledge consists of linguistic manipulations.

["The Cashing-in: The Student 'Rebellion,' " CUI, 246.]

If [the student "rebels"] "seem unable to formulate or sustain a systematized political theory of society," yet shriek with moral righteousness that they propose to achieve their social goals by physical force-hasn't Logical Positivism taught them that ethical propositions have no cognitive meaning and are merely a report on one's feelings or the equivalent of emotional e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns? If they are savagely blind to everything but the immediate moment-hasn't Logical Positivism taught them that nothing else can be claimed with certainty to exist?

[tbid.,248.]

Logical Positivism declares that "reality," "ident.i.ty," "existence," "mind" are meaningless terms, that man can be certain of nothing but the sensory perceptions of the immediate moment ... it declares that the meaning of the proposition: "Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo" is your walk to the library where you read it in a book.

["The Comprachicos," NL, 225.]

See also a.n.a.lYTIC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; BEHAVIORISM; CERTAINTY;KANT, IMMANUEL; MEANING (of CONCEPTS); PHILOSOPHY;PRAGMATISM; SCIENCE; SUBJECTIVISM; WORDS.

Loneliness. The thinking child is not antisocial (he is, in fact, the only type of child fit for social relationships). When he develops his first values and conscious convictions, particularly as he approaches adolescence, he feels an intense desire to share them with a friend who would understand him; if frustrated, he feels an acute sense of loneliness. (Loneliness is specifically the experience of this type of child-or adult; it is the experience of those who have something to offer. The emotion that drives conformists to "belong," is not loneliness, but fear-the fear of intellectual independence and responsibility. The thinking child seeks equals; the conformist seeks protectors.) ["The Comprachicos," NL, 213.]

See also EMOTIONS; INDEPENDENCE; RATIONALITY; SECOND-HANDERS.

Love. Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a s.l.u.t.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 29; pb 31.]

Romantic love, in the full sense of the term, is an emotion possible only to the man (or woman) of unbreached self-esteem: it is his response to his own highest values in the person of another-an integrated response of mind and body, of love and s.e.xual desire. Such a man (or woman) is incapable of experiencing a s.e.xual desire divorced from spiritual values.

["Of Living Death," TO, Oct. 1968, 2.]

Man is an end in himself. Romantic love-the profound, exalted, lifelong pa.s.sion that unites his mind and body in the s.e.xual act-is the living testimony to that principle.

[Ibid., 3.]

There are two aspects of man's existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.

I am referring here to romantic love, in the serious meaning of that term-as distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is devoid of any consistent values, i.e., of any lasting emotions other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person's sense of life that one falls in love-with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person's character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul-the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one's own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one's own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.

Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism-in terms of human suffering-is the belief that love is a matter of' "the heart," not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is the expression of philosophy-of a subconscious philosophical sum-and, perhaps, no other aspect of human existence needs the conscious power of philosophy quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason and emotion, of mind and values, then-and only then-it is the greatest reward of man's life.

["Philosophy and Sense of Life," RM, 40; pb 32.]

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love-because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.