As Dagny enters Richard Halley's valley cottage in the cool calm of the night, she is enveloped in music that strikes her as a "symbol of moral pride" ( 717) This pride is not built on what the heart deems valuable, but on what the mind knows to be valuable. Richard Halley is a musical composer, he is an artist, yet he understands that “all work is creative work when 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 Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Dagny's act of playing her music and experiencing it is "mutual trade for mutual profit" (717). Halley however explains to Dagny that when he plays for general audiences in the outside world, there is no mutual exchange for his music: "I am not interested in being admired without cause, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively - or blindly." (717) The Halley's work has typically been judged by unthinking men, who themselves know and produce very little and yet, Halley complains, it is precisely these people who evaluate a thinking man. The reason Halley had to leave the outside world and take her work with her is essentially why every member of John's Gulch comes to live within the valley. For Halley, her art is a testament to her “ability to see” and her relentless “devotion to the pursuit of truth.” (718) Spontaneous invocations, banalities and daydreams cannot exist for the artist who seeks the truth, only through the laborious and "incessant tension on his own power of clarity" can the businessman and the artist achieve the pinnacle of their mind potential. Halley pursues her 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, attaching to it, and cultivating the idea in thought. Dagny wonders why Halley no longer shares her musical genius with the world, but Halley makes it clear that the general public believed they possessed her talent and these “zero worshipers” (937) failed to fully grasp the totality of her work . Only when they were ready to embrace his work were Halley's efforts considered a success. In effect, he had given his mind, and the 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. Those who did not have an understanding of genuine value cannot attach their own idea of ​​value to a creation, so the only thing they can do is destroy and degrade it according to their own decrepit soul. Galt proposes to Halley the idea that his "work is the purpose of [his] life" (934), in that what he does is an external exhalation of who he is: work is the branch, the body the vessel of life. strength and both are rooted in the mind's ability to seek the light of its own maturity and growth. Whoever discovers the valley approaches work and life with the same “mathematical precision” (719): his skill is based on the logical calculation of his mind, and his body is the reinforced effect of his mind. They are truly powerful in their endeavors because of their incessant desire to seek that which is rational, to be "the man not only of self-made wealth, but... of the self-made soul." uncompromising devotion to the pursuit of truth” (718) he explains to Dagny, who has distanced himself from the “haters of life” and refused to allow them to destroy his highest moral code. His thirst for knowledge and hunger for truth, his desire