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More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com122FROM NOVELIST TO PHILOSOPHER, 1944–1957Lane was unconvinced. Calmly she told Rand, “you have perhapsshown me that I am a collectivist.” But she simply couldn’t believe thatall human action should be or was motivated by self-interest. If that wasthe case, Lane asked, why did she herself oppose Social Security? Laneopposed Social Security because she thought it was bad for society as awhole, “which I can’t deny is a do-good purpose.” But opposing SocialSecurity on “do-good” rather than self-interested grounds was not, Lanethought, inappropriate. Lane also rejected Rand’s atomistic view of theworld, recalling her frontier childhood to illustrate human interdependence.She described a typhoid epidemic in her small prairie town:“People ‘helped each other out,’ that was all. . . . It was just what peopledid, of course. So far as there was any idea in it at all, it was that whenyou were sick, if you ever were, the others would take care of you. It was‘common neighborliness.’ . . . The abnormal, that I would have thoughtabout, would have been its not being there.” She concluded, “There ISa sense of ‘owing’ in it, of mutuality, mutual obligation of persons topersons as persons.” 58 Lane saw charity arising naturally from humansocieties. What bothered her was the coercion involved in governmentprograms like Social Security, not the underlying moral principles theyreflected. But it was just these underlying moral principles that Randopposed.As she wrote to Lane, Rand groped toward an explanation of howand why they differed. Both women agreed they were operating fromdifferent assumptions. Rand told her, “that is why I intend to write abook someday, stating my case from basic premises on.” 59 Throughtheir letters it became clear that Rand and Lane did not share the sameunderstanding of human nature on either an individual or a social level.But these differences lay under the surface, for Rand had not yet explicitlyformulated her moral and political philosophy. For instance, Randtold Lane, “now of course I don’t believe that there is any ‘natural’ orinstinctive human action. (I won’t try to state my reasons here—thatwould have to be a treatise on the nature of man.)” This was a beliefthat Paterson shared but Lane did not. Presented without benefit of thetreatise she hoped someday to write, Rand’s ideas came across to Lane asassertions of dubious validity. Even Rand recognized this, acknowledgingthat her letters to Lane were a poor vehicle for communicating hercomplete philosophy. She asked Lane, “Do you know what I’ve written