Observe the unflagging curiosity of Equality 7-2521's intellect. Though forbidden, he dissects animals, melts metals, mixes acids, and raises a lightning rod. He explores and experiments, until finally, he discovers the "power of the sky." Although he explicitly accepts the social judgment that to think and act alone is evil — and though he realizes that, if caught, he will be executed — his desire to understand the laws of nature supersedes all of this. "[It] was our curse," he says, "which drove us to our crime. We had been a good Street Sweeper and like all our brother Street Sweepers, save for our cursed wish to know. We looked too long at the stars at night, and at the trees and the earth." Despite everything a hostile society might do to him, Equality 7-2521 is driven by one all-consuming passion: he He must know. He possesses the soul, as well as the intellect, of a great scientist.
By virtue of this kind of unshakeable independence, Rand argues, humankind forges ahead, moving from ignorance to enlightenment. Many of society's great thinkers and innovators were persecuted in much the same way that Equality 7-2521 is. For example, Socrates was executed for the originality of his moral principles. Galileo was threatened with torture by the Inquisition for daring to defend Copernicus, and his contemporary, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake. Charles Darwin was damned for originating, and John Scopes jailed for teaching, the theory of evolution. Robert Fulton was scorned, Henry Ford mocked, and Louis Pasteur reviled because of their inventions or new ideas.
The court of social opinion has generally convicted freethinkers. But by being freethinkers, the Equality 7-2521s of the world are unconcerned about the evaluations of others. Free thought and action continues. But when an innovator like Equality 7-2521 is caught in a political dictatorship that physically prevents him from researching, experimenting, or studying, then the creative mind is stifled.
