Dr. Andrew Bernstein urged audience members to establish their own goals by using rational minds during his speech Thursday night at the Memorial Union.

This theory of value formation, known as rational egoism, was the main subject of Ayn Rand’s book titled “The Fountainhead,” which Bernstein discussed.

Bernstein has taught courses in philosophy at several New York area colleges and is currently completing his first novel. He is considered an expert on “The Fountainhead,” having written a teacher’s guide to the book.

The 90-minute speech was attended by a crowd of more than 70 people. Nearly all of the audience members seemed interested and emotionally moved by Bernstein, whose Brooklyn roots showed through in his thick speaking accent.

Bernstein began his speech with a brief discussion of the concepts of rational egoism.

To be a rational egoist, he said, one must live only by his or her rationally formed values. He defined these values as things that motivate people, give their lives purpose, and matter most to them.

“Our personal values must then coincide with man’s metaphysical nature,” Bernstein said.

He introduced the idea of secondhandedness, the opposite of rational egoism, as well. Bernstein said secondhandedness was living one’s life for other people and paying no attention to your values.

“A lifetime of forsaking one’s values will lead to spiritual desperation,” he said.

The key to understanding the main characters of “The Fountainhead,” according to Bernstein, is secondhandedness. Each principle has a different level of secondhandedness, and this leads to all the characters having different motivations in their lives.

The first character Bernstein profiled was Peter Keating, a man who never forms values in his life and is a paragon of living secondhandedly. He gives up the two true loves in his life, architecture and Katherine Hallsy, because his mother does not approve of either of them, and this complete lack of values gives him a miserable life.

“One’s self and soul is all, to surrender them is complete loss,” Bernstein said. At the end of the book, Keating does realize his error and attempts to return to architecture, but it is too late.

Secondly, Bernstein examined the villain of “The Fountainhead,” Ellsworth Tooey. He has what Bernstein calls a “deep terror of living in the physical world.”

Tooey uses his career as a guidance counselor at a college to destroy the values of his young charges and turn them into “rudderless floundering wrecks.”

He lives the ultimate secondhanded life, because his existence is based only on destroying the souls of others. Tooey was constantly driving students like Peter Keating away from their true loves.

“Tooey knows what it takes to control a person: empty their soul and their values and fill it with whatever you wish to control them with,” Bernstein said.

He cited a quote by Tooey from the “The Fountainhead” outlining how he encouraged students to abandon their dreams: “It’s not what you can get out of society; it’s what you can give.”

The third main character Bernstein covered was Gail Wynand, a newspaper publisher who worked his way out of the slums of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen to become a man of great prominence.

However, he had to sacrifice part of himself to get there. Then, when faced at the end of the book with a dilemma — to side with his friend Howard Roark (the hero of the novel) or keep his profitable paper — Wynand forsakes his friend.

Bernstein described Wynand as a combination between a rational egoist and a secondhanded individual.

“Gail Wynand sees with his own eyes and knows with his own mind,” Bernstein said, “but his flaw was accepting the mistaken premise that in this world one rules or is ruled, eats or is eaten, and kills or is killed.”

As Rand once said, Wynand “was not born a secondhander.” Bernstein said Wynand was definitely a genius, but that ingenuity was devoted to pleasing the low-brows of society.

Finally, Bernstein profiled the only true rational egoist in “The Fountainhead,” Howard Roark. Roark knew that “unbreached values are the original sauce of prosperity.”

Bernstein described Roark as “a life force, an inspiration to those around him,” and a person with three valued loves in his life.

The first was architecture, which he loved for no other reason but his happiness. Roark had many conflicts in the novel with individuals who attempted to change his buildings and influence “Roark style.” He even turned down a hefty commission on a Manhattan Bank Project because the men in charge of the project wanted to make some minor changes to his plans.

Roark’s second love was Dominique Franc“n. Franc“n was an egoist in her own right but unfortunately was overcome by pessimism as well.

“Dominique Franc“n knew her values, but felt they had no chance of fulfillment in the real world and therefore denied them,” Bernstein said. Despite Franc“n’s imperfections, Roark loved her dearly.

Roark’s third value was his “undeviating allegiance” to Gail Wynand. Bernstein said their friendship existed in spite of all his friends’ warnings. Roark felt this love because he saw the genius in Wynand, the goodness that elevated Wynand above other men.

Bernstein said he could relate with this feeling much more than with the Christian view that all men are created equally immoral.

“Jesus Christ loves Hitler as much as Michelangelo? I think that is a sick view of humanity. This idea did not always rule Western thought,” he said.

After the profiling of characters, Bernstein took some questions from the audience. Most of the inquiries involved either Ayn Rand or a more in-depth discussion of rational egoism. Bernstein then finished his speech by proclaiming Rand’s novel “a masterpiece, and possibly the best novel ever written.”

The speech was sponsored by the Objectivists at Iowa State, the Committee on Lectures and The Ayn Rand Institute.