" ... a man trained to serve society, a builder who became a destroyer ... "
The voice went on, practiced and confident. The faces filling the room listened with the response they granted to a good weekday dinner: satisfying and to be forgotten within an hour. They agreed with every sentence; they had heard it before, they had always heard it, this was what the world lived by; it was self-evident — like a puddle before one's feet.
The prosecutor introduced his witnesses. The policeman who had arrested Roark took the stand to tell how he had found the defendant standing by the electric plunger. The night watchman related how he had been sent away from the scene; his testimony was brief; the prosecutor preferred not to stress the subject of Dominique. The contractor's superintendent testified about the dynamite missing from the stores on the site. Officials of Cortlandt, building inspectors, estimators took the stand to describe the building and the extent of the damage. This concluded the first day of the trial.
Peter Keating was the first witness called on the following day.
He sat on the stand, slumped forward. He looked at the prosecutor obediently. His eyes moved, once in a while. He looked at the crowd, at the jury, at Roark. It made no difference.
"Mr. Keating, will you state under oath whether you designed the project ascribed to you, known as Cortlandt Homes?"
"No. I didn't."
"Who designed it?"
"Howard Roark."
"At whose request?"
"At my request."
"Why did you call on him?"
"Because I was not capable of doing it myself."
There was no sound of honesty in the voice, because there was no sound of effort to pronounce a truth of such nature; no tone of truth or falsehood; only indifference.
The prosecutor handed him a sheet of paper. "Is this the agreement you signed?"
Keating held the paper in his hand. "Yes."
"Is that Howard Roark's signature?"
"Yes."
"Will you please read the terms of this agreement to the jury?"
Keating read it aloud. His voice came evenly, well drilled. Nobody in the courtroom realized that this testimony had been intended as a sensation. It was not a famous architect publicly confessing incompetence; it was a man reciting a memorized lesson. People felt mat were he interrupted, he would not be able to pick up the next sentence, but would have to start all over again from the beginning.
He answered a great many questions. The prosecutor introduced in evidence Roark's original drawings of Cortlandt, which Keating had kept; the copies which Keating had made of them; and photographs of Cortlandt as it had been built.
"Why did you object so strenuously to the excellent structural changes suggested by Mr. Prescott and Mr. Webb?"
"I was afraid of Howard Roark."
"What did your knowledge of his character lead you to expect?'
"Anything."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. I was afraid. I used to be afraid."
The questions went on. The story was unusual, but the audience felt bored. It did not sound like the recital of a participant. The other witnesses had seemed to have a more personal connection with the case.
When Keating left the stand, the audience had the odd impression that no change had occurred in the act of a man's exit; as if no person had walked out.
"The prosecution rests," said the District Attorney.
The judge looked at Roark.
"Proceed," he said. His voice was gentle.
Roark got up. "Your Honor, I shall call no witnesses. This will be my testimony and my summation."
"Take the oath."
Roark took the oath. He stood by the steps of the witness stand. The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.
The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one's own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name — fear — need — dependence — hatred?
Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd — and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone's approval? — does it matter? — am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free — free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room.
It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak.
"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.
"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures — because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer — because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
"No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building — that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.
"His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.
"The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power — that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself.