As Dagny enters Richard Halley's valley home in the cool stillness of the night, she is enveloped by music that hits her like a " symbol of moral pride” (717). is not built on what the heart deems to be valuable, but on what the mind knows to be valuable. Richard Halley is a composer of music, he is an artist, and yet he understands that “all work is creative work if it is done by a thinking man” (933). He approaches his art with the same moral productivity as a businessman. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Dagny's playing and experiencing her music is a "mutual exchange for mutual benefit" (717). Halley explains to Dagny, however, that when he plays for large audiences in the outside world, there is no reciprocal exchange for his music: "I don't like to be admired without cause, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively – or blindly. » (717) Halley's work has generally been judged by unthinking men, who themselves know and produce very little and yet, Halley laments, it is these very people who evaluate a man of wit. The reason Halley had to leave the outside world and take his work with him is essentially why every member of John's Gulch comes to live inside the valley. For Halley, his art testifies to his “ability to see” and his relentlessness. “devotion to the search for truth. » (718) Spontaneous invocations, platitudes and reverie cannot exist for the artist in search of truth, it is only through the laborious and "incessant pressure on his power of clarity" that the businessman and the artist can reach the peak of their mental potential. Halley pursues his creations to their logical and brilliant end, but "the nature of the plunderer" (682) is to deny this process - the process of mental evolution, of identifying what is real, of holding on to it and nourish the idea in thought. Dagny wonders why Halley no longer shares his musical genius with the world, but Halley makes it clear that ordinary audiences believed they possessed his talent and that these "worshippers of zero" (937) could not fully grasp the totality of his work. It was not until they were ready to adopt his work that Halley's efforts were considered successful. In fact, he had given away his mind and the mastered product of his mind for free to people who had neither the rigor to understand it nor the ability to exchange anything of substantial value. cannot bestow their own ideas of value on a creation, so the only thing they can do is destroy and debase it in accordance with their own decrepit souls. Galt offers Halley the idea that his “work is the purpose of [his] life” (934), insofar as what he does is an external expiration of who he is: work is the branch, the body the vessel of life. strength and both are rooted in the spirit's ability to seek the light of its own maturity and growth. All who discover the valley approach their work and life with the same “mathematical precision” (719) – their ability is based on the logical calculation of their mind and their body is the empowered effect of their mind. They are truly powerful in their endeavors because of their incessant desire to pursue that which is rational, to be "the man not only of the wealth he himself created, but... of his self-taught soul." » (934) It's because of Halley's "man". his uncompromising dedication to the search for truth" (718), he explains to Dagny, that he moved away from