This chapter establishes several important points regarding Rearden and his family. Rearden is an innovative metallurgist who, by means of herculean labor over a ten-year period, created a new metal that will revolutionize industrial production. Like all great creative minds, Rearden is motivated by his love of the work (constructive action in the field of his choice). His work — both as a manufacturer of steel and as the inventor of Rearden Metal — is enormously beneficial to his fellow man every day. This fact pleases Rearden, but it's not his driving motive. His motivation is the creative effort itself, his love of doing the work. The positive results that his fellow man accrues are a felicitous secondary consequence.
With the character of Hank Rearden, Ayn Rand makes a point regarding the nature of creative individuals. Rearden is similar to the great inventors, industrialists, writers, and artists of history. The Edisons and Wright Brothers, the Carnegies and Rockefellers, the Shakespeares and Michelangelos all created works that significantly benefitted mankind. Whether through the electric light or the airplane, the production of steel or oil, or the creation of brilliant poetry or sculpture, these great minds have been the benefactors of human society. But, like Rearden, these creative geniuses are driven primarily by their love of their work — by their passionate fascination with a specific field of endeavor. Rearden, and all original thinkers like him, are self-driven, self-motivated, and self-actualized. They aren't slaves to others, nor do they think of themselves as such. Rearden is selfish, not in the conventional sense of his family's accusations (meaning uncaring toward others) but in Ayn Rand's sense of being motivated by his own values and happiness.
