"To Deal With Men by Force is as Impractical as to Deal With Nature by Persuasion."
"Any natural phenomenon, i.e., any event which occurs without human participation, is the metaphysically given and could not have occurred differently or failed to occur; any phenomenon involving human action is the man-made, and could have been different. For example, a flood occurring in an uninhabited land, is the metaphysically given; a dam built to contain the flood water, is the man-made; if the builders miscalculate and the dam breaks, the disaster is metaphysical in its origin, but intensified by man in its consequences. To correct the situation, men must obey nature by studying the cause and potentialities of the flood, then command nature by building better flood controls.
Man's faculty of volition is not a contradiction of nature, but it opens the way for a host of contradictions - when and if men do not grasp the crucial difference between the metaphysically given and any object, institution, procedure, or rule of conduct made by man.
It is the metaphysically given that must be accepted: it cannot be changed. It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically: it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary. Man is not omniscient or infallible: he can make innocent errors through lack of knowledge, or he can lie, cheat and fake. The man-made may be a product of genius, perceptiveness, ingenuity - or it may be a product of stupidity, deception, malice, evil. One man may be right and everyone else wrong, or vice versa (or any numerical division in between). Nature does not give man any automatic guarantee of the truth of his judgments (and this is a metaphysically given fact, which must be accepted). Who, then, is to judge? Each man, to the best of his ability and honesty. What is his standard of judgment? The metaphysically given.
The metaphysically given cannot be true or false, it simply is - and man determines the truth or falsehood of his judgments by whether they correspond to or contradict the facts of reality. The metaphysically given cannot be right or wrong - it is the standard of right or wrong, by which a (rational) man judges his goals, his values, his choices. The metaphysically given is, was, will be, and had to be. Nothing made by man had to be: it was made by choice.
A man-made product did not have to exist, but, once made, it does exist. A man's actions did not have to be performed, but, once performed, they are facts of reality. The same is true of man's character he did not have to make the choices he made, but, once he has formed his character, it is a fact, and it is his personal identity. (Man's volition gives him great, but not unlimited, latitude to change his character: if he does, the change becomes a fact.)..."
Read more about the Metaphysical vs Man-Made @ Ayn Rand Lexicon
