ing the life proper to man. Neither is a man whose mind is volitionally paralyzed.
If man is to live, he must recognize that facts are facts, that A is A, that existence exists—that reality is an absolute,
not to be evaded or escaped—and that the task of his mind is to perceive it, that this is his primary responsibility.
He must recognize that his life requires the pursuit and achievement of rational values, values consonant with his
nature and with reality—that life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. He must recognize that
self-value is the value without which no others are possible, but it is a value that has to be earned—and the virtue
that earns it, is thinking.
To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his
only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his
inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.^11The cardinal principle at the base of the Objectivist ethical system is the statement that "it is only the concept of
'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil." This is
the identification that cuts through the Gordian knot of past ethical theorizing, that dissolves the mystical fog in the
field of morality, and refutes the contention that a rational morality is impossible and that values cannot be derived
from facts.
It is the nature of living entities—the fact that they must sustain their life by self-generated action—that makes the
existence of values possible and necessary. For each living species, the course of action required is specific; what
an entity is determines what it ought to do.
By identifying the context in which values arise existentially, Objectivism refutes the claim—especially prevalent
today—that the ultimate standard of any moral judgment is "arbitrary," that normative propositions cannot be
derived from factual propositions. By identifying the genetic roots of "value" epistemologically, it demonstrates
that not to hold man's life as one's standard of moral judgment is to be guilty of a logical contradiction. It is only to
a