But the mind must be left free to think and to act on its findings, which is the deepest principle lying at the heart of this story. In a free society, an original thinker like Equality 7-2521 is free to experiment and research, to invent and innovate, and to make scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. This concept is why the world's freest countries have made so many discoveries and have achieved such a high standard of living. Science and progress require intellectual freedom. A totalitarian state stifles the freedom of mind that such progress depends on. A worldwide totalitarian state, as depicted in Anthem, leaves the mind with no refuge. Thinkers like Equality 7-2521 have no place to go. They are trapped in a system that stifles freethinking. Rand argues that a society in which the mind is stifled will not merely fail to progress, it will regress, losing all the advances that .freer men have achieved, just as accomplishments of ancient Greek society were lost in the Dark Ages.
In defending the freedom of the mind as a necessity of human survival and prosperity, Anthem is a precursor to Ayn Rand's major novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. All of these works feature some aspect of this theme. Anthem shows the collapse into Dark-Age barbarism that results when the mind is stifled. The Fountainhead shows that the independent minds responsible for progress and prosperity are generally opposed by their societies, those most likely to benefit from innovation. Atlas Shrugged shows that the rational mind is humankind's survival instrument, as well as what happens to the world when its best thinkers go on strike. All of her subsequent fiction presents heroes such as Equality 7-2521, persons of unswerving loyalty to their independent judgment.
