It is the very parasitism of Toohey's functioning that makes him dangerous. It is also what leaves him helpless. If he cannot perform constructive tasks, how is he to survive in a physical world? Only by insinuating himself into the souls of others and controlling them can he survive. Roark states in his courtroom address that the creator seeks to conquer nature and the parasite to conquer men. Toohey's helplessness in the face of reality drives him toward spiritual and social conquest. He must hold dominion over others in order to ensure his own survival. The larger Toohey's cult following, the more powerful the buffer between him and the physical world of which he is terrified. Victims like Keating and Catherine Halsey are not weaker — like antelopes devoured by a lion — but essentially stronger in their capacity to deal efficaciously with physical reality. Toohey must control them, for their very ability to perform at least some types of productive work is the lifeline he craves. Keating and Catherine are his sole source of survival, and so, like a vampire of the spirit, he sucks their lifeblood.
But Toohey is even worse than this. His power-seeking is not fundamentally motivated by a quest for survival, but by something significantly more evil. He doesn't merely fear the men capable of independent existence; he hates and desires to destroy them. In his childhood, he knew Johnny Stokes, "a bright kid with dimples and curls," whom people always turned to see. Because no one ever turned to look at Ellsworth Toohey, he turns the hose on Johnny. Years later, part of his scheming to involve Dominique first with Keating, then with Wynand, is a plainly stated intention to destroy this brilliant and beautiful woman. He openly seeks to ruin Roark's career and, in a confession speech at the end of the novel, Toohey answers Keating's question regarding a desire to kill Roark by stating that he wants Roark alive — but utterly broken. The question of the fate to befall the independent men of the world if and when Toohey reaches his goal of intellectual advisor to a Fascist or Communist dictator is clear: Just as he intends to imprison and break Roark, so he intends the same for Roark's comrades-in-spirit. Only two kinds of power exist in life: the power to create and the power to destroy. Toohey neither seeks nor attains the power to create. He possesses only the power to destroy — and he is particularly concerned with using it against the able and successful individuals whom he envies.
