It is often derisively stated that the survey of Western civilization that Ayn Rand presents in her title essay of her book For the New Intellectual is seriously flawed and disrespectable because of her sweeping use of two quite negative metaphors to characterize the views she opposes. I'm speaking, of course, of Attila and the Witch Doctor, or what she also calls "the mystics of the muscle" and the "mystics of the mind."

Because of the simplicity of this model, it is viewed not as elegant and illuminating, but as simplistic and misleading -- and is taken as evidence that Rand is not a "serious" philosopher or historian. Yet, a very serious philosopher, Stephen C. Pepper, used in his classic World Hypotheses (1942) just such a set of labels for two very similar groups of what he calls "inadequate world hypotheses."

On the one hand are the "animists," who see consciousness (one or many spirits) as running the universe, and who maintain their view as infallible and impose it with authoritarian methods -- and on the other are the "mystics," who regard consciousness (viz., an overwhelming, vivid emotion) as determining what is/is not real, and who maintain their view as indubitable and advocate it in dogmatic fashion.

Pepper also refers to these views as "animistic spiritualism" and "mystical intuitionism," respectively, and he even (in Rand-like fashion) points out that the animists and mystics (authoritarian mystics of the muscle and dogmatic mystics of the mind) have historically tried to join hands and brush aside their differences and contradictions, but that their alliances eventually break down, as "each group has tried to clean the other out."

Great stuff from Pepper -- well worth reading for this and many other reasons. (Jeff Riggenbach has recently said good things about him in an essay in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and I have made some applications of Pepper's ideas in a forthcoming JARS essay, as well as in another essay that has not yet been placed.)

The bottom line of all this is that, despite specific inaccuracies on this or that philosophers, Rand's vision, her grand sweeping view of the trend of human history, is right on the money. Her view of things is not an embarrassingly unscholarly aberration, but a well-established academic perspective, expressed in her own inimitable style. I treasure this essay, despite its flaws.

[This was originally posted August 15, 2001 to the Atlantis internet discussion group.]