"Don't worry. I'm not going to vanish. Let them all give up and stop
Working. I won't. I don't know my limit and don't care. All I have to
Know is that I can't be stopped."
  "Any man can be stopped, Mr. Rearden."
  "How?
  "It's only a matter of knowing man's motive power."                      
  "What is it?"
  "You ought to know, Mr. Rearden. You're one of the last moral
Men left to the world."
Rearden chuckled in bitter amusement. "I've been called just about        
Everything but that. And you're wrong. You have no idea how wrong."   
  "Are you sure?"
  "I ought to know. Moral? What on earth made you say it?"
  Francisco pointed to the mills beyond the window. "This."
  For a long moment, Rearden looked at him without moving, then
Asked only, "What do you mean?"
  "If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in
Material form-there it is. Look at it, Mr. Rearden. Every girder of it,
Every pipe, wire and valve was put there by a choice in answer to the
Question: right or wrong? You had to choose right and you had to
Choose the best within your knowledge-the best for your purpose,
Which was to make steel-and then move on and extend the knowledge,
And do better, and still better, with your purpose as your standard of
Value. You had to act on your own judgment, you had to have the
Capacity to judge, the courage to stand on the verdict of your mind, and
The purest, the most ruthless consecration to the rule of doing right, of
Doing the best, the utmost best possible to you. Nothing could have
Made you act against your judgment, and you would have rejected as
Wrong as evil-any man who attempted to tell you that the best way
To heat a furnace was to fill it with ice. Millions of men, an entire
Nation, were not able to deter you from producing Rearden Metal-be-
Cause you had the knowledge of its superlative value and the power
Which such knowledge gives. But what I wonder about, Mr. Rearden,
Is why you live by one code of principles when you deal with nature?
And by another when you deal with men?"
 Rearden's eyes were fixed on him so intently that the question came
Slowly, as if the effort to pronounce it were a distraction: "What do you
Mean?"                                                            
  "Why don't you hold to the purpose of your life as clearly and
Rigidly as you hold to the purpose of your mills?"
  "What do you mean?"
  "You're guilty of a great sin, Mr. Rearden, much guiltier than they
Tell you, but not in the way they preach. The worst guilt is to accept an
Undeserved guilt-and that is what you have been doing all your life.
You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your
Virtues. You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned punish-
ment-and to let it grow the heavier the greater the virtues you
Practiced. But your virtues were those, which keep men alive. Your
Own moral code-the one you lived by, but never stated, acknowledged
Or defended-was the code that preserves man's existence. If you were
Punished for it, what was the nature of those who punished you?
Yours was the code of life. What, then, is theirs? What standard of
value lies at its root? What is its ultimate purpose? Do you think that
what you're facing is merely a conspiracy to seize your wealth? You,
who know the source of wealth, should know it's much more and
much worse than that. Did you ask me to name man's motive power?
Man's motive power is his moral code. Ask yourself where their code is
leading you and what it offers you as your final goal. A viler evil than
to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil
than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he
leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides. By their
own statement, it is they who need you and have nothing to offer you
in return. By their own statement, you must support them because they
cannot survive without you. Consider the obscenity of offering their
impotence and their need-their need of you-as a justification for
your torture. Are you willing to accept it? Do you care to purchase-at
the price of your great endurance, at the price of your agony-the
satisfaction of the needs of your own destroyers?"
  "No!"
  "Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw
Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that
he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms
trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his
strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down
upon his shoulders-what would you tell him to do?"
  "I . . . don't know.  What . . . could he do? What would you
tell him?"
  "To shrug."