 Let let us now return to the question of how we should understand the relationship between long-term survival and survival as a rational being—the life “proper to a rational being” (Rand 1961b: 27). Is a life proper to a rational being a necessary means, and only a necessary means, to literal, long-term survival? Or is such a life itself the ultimate goal, the kind of survival worth having? Again, what are we to make of the many passages in which Rand states that the ultimate goal is one’s own happiness?