When Dagny refuses to withdraw her mind from the looters' world, Francisco makes clear to her that they are enemies and that she is never to ask him for money or help for her railroad. He feels certain that without her and Rearden, the looters cannot survive. Ironically, Dagny is propping up the system the thinkers despise; she is Francisco's most dangerous adversary. Although he still loves her, he must find a way to defeat her.
The possibility that Quentin Daniels might give up his work on the motor is intolerable to Dagny. She needs to know that somewhere in the world the human mind still moves forward. If any hope exists for the future, the great achievements of man's mind cannot be abandoned on a scrap heap. Otherwise, all that remains are the looters and the devastation wrought by their policies. Dagny needs one bright spot related to her work to serve as fuel, as motivation, as some quiet knowledge that the human mind still works toward progress. At a literal level, Dagny's quest to reconstruct the motor is an attempt to develop a specific invention of enormous life-giving power. But the quest is also a symbol of an unbreakable commitment to the mind's power to create life and a refusal to surrender this power to the encroaching Dark Age. Dagny, who worships the highest achievements of man's mind and who has suffered as, one by one, the great thinkers abandoned the country, recognizes that Daniels' work is the mind's last stand in the world. She will defend it until her final breath.
