Interesting, I don’t know too much about Steinbeck so I’ll have to look into that, thank you. 

I don’t know if Rand would be totally opposed to that. There are people born with defects of all sorts (mental and physical), but one says that [the average] man is born a certain way and according to certain rules. There will always be instances of malformed people (as explained by Mr. Steinbeck in your quote), but they’re not the norm. 

I like Rand a lot, but I wouldn’t call myself an all out religious objectivist. I follow reason where I see reason, and she just happened to be rational pretty often.