"Nothing made by man had to be: it was made by choice."
Metaphysical vs. Man-Made
"Man's faculty of volition as such 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, it to judge? Each man, to the best of his ability and honesty. What is his standard of judgment? The metaphysically given.
"It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically."
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 or contradict the facts of reality. The metaphysically given cannot be right or wrong - it s 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."
~ Found at Ayn Rand Lexicon - Metaphysically vs. Man-Made
