Toohey’s power-seeking activities are manifested in two interrelated forms. At the private level, he cultivates a legion of brainwashed followers who have relinquished all independent functioning and obey his every command. Toohey is a cult leader in this regard, exactly like such real-life figures as Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Sun Myung Moon. His method is to convince others to give up their values, those things they most love and that give their lives meaning. “No,” he advises one boy. “I wouldn’t go in for music if I were you. . . . That’s just the trouble—that you love it. . . . Give it up. Yes, even if it hurts like hell.” When a weak-minded person like Peter Keating gives up what he wants, his life is experienced as empty. He needs someone to fill it with purpose and meaning. He is no longer capable of doing this independently; he needs someone to do it externally. Ellsworth Toohey “was never too busy to give them his full attention,” and he fills this void.
In the act of co-opting men’s souls, Toohey is simultaneously furthering his political goals. A citizenry of independent thinkers, like Roark and Dominique, will not follow the commands of a Hitler or a Stalin. A society of independent men will form a political system of independence in which individuals are left free to pursue their own goals. A collectivist dictatorship requires a society of Peter Keatings, who are eager to obey a leader in exchange for approval and security. In the United States, Toohey faces a heritage of individualism and personal liberty that collectivists in Germany, Russia, or China would not. Toohey knows that every person he turns into a mindless zombie readies the country by just that much for the collectivist state he seeks. His followers will continue to obey if he is able to reach his goal of establishing a collectivist dictatorship in the United States with himself as chief intellectual advisor to the dictator.
Toohey is a man whose life is utterly dominated by other men—by the schemes, scams, plots, and machinations necessary to control others. Even Peter Keating, blind follower that he is, lives a more independent existence; for at least Keating can design buildings, however ineptly, and at least Keating can love a women, however tragically. But Toohey does not accomplish even this much. His entire existence is devoted to gaining spiritual and political power over others. Others are not merely the dominant—they are the exclusive—factor in his life. In this way, Toohey forms the sharpest contrast with Roark. Where Roark’s life is devoted to nature (to gaining the knowledge and expertise necessary to build, to deal effectively with physical reality), Toohey’s life is devoted to society (to identifying weaknesses in, and gaining mastery over, other men). Both men seek power—Roark over nature, Toohey over men. The contrast is presented brilliantly in the closing scene of Part Two. Toohey asks Roark what he thinks of him; Roark answers honestly, with no bravado, “I don’t think of you.” Toohey’s existence is defined by what others think of him; they are his reality; he is real only in their evaluations. He needs others to regard him as an important (indeed, the all-important) factor in their lives. But this is not so for Roark. “Toohey looked at him, and then at the bare trees around them, at the river far below, at the great rise of the sky beyond the river.” The trees, the river, the sky—the forces and life forms of nature—these are Roark’s domain. Roark can deal effectively with nature; he can survive independently; he has no need to conquer or control others. On the contrary, he has that which conquerors seek to control—the capacity to build and grow, the ability to create abundance. In this moment, Toohey comes face-to-face with the stark contrast between himself and Roark. Toohey’s face has the quality of “listening to something as simple as fate.” At some unadmitted level of consciousness, Toohey has just realized the contrast between Roark and himself, and he sees now why this is a battle he cannot win.
Toohey has no chance with independent men who have no need of him. But with dependent souls, like his niece, Catherine Halsey, he has complete success. He preaches to her the evil of selfishness and the virtue of selflessness. But Katie loves Peter Keating sincerely. She realizes that selflessness entails the sacrifice of her values, including the renunciation of her engagement, and she recoils from this. At some uncomprehended emotional level, Katie senses her uncle’s threat. When convinced that Keating will marry her, she spontaneously cries: “I’m not afraid of you, Uncle Ellsworth!” But Keating does not marry her. Toohey has long urged Keating to marry Dominique instead. When Toohey succeeds in this goal, he has accomplished two tasks with one stroke: He has emptied Keating’s soul of its last personal value, and he has emptied Katie’s soul of its only one. Both are now utterly selfless, devoid of loves of their own. Both are now floundering wrecks, whose empty lives are absent of meaning and who are incapable of self-guidance. Toohey, the spider ever increasing his supply of flies, has just added two more to his web. From now on, he controls the lives of both Keating and his niece. But he fails miserably with Roark.
Despite the notoriety of the Stoddard Temple—Toohey’s best effort against Roark—the decline in Roark’s career is only temporary. The Enright House, the Cord Building, the Aquitania Hotel, and the Stoddard Temple are major projects, and Roark’s designs are brilliant. These buildings are known and will attract to Roark in the future the kind of clients who care only about the quality of an architect’s work, and not about his social standing. Primarily, these buildings will draw Gail Wynand’s attention to Roark’s work—with significant positive consequences for Roark’s career.
