  The Argument from Posterity begins with Crummell's observation that individuals have some “relation” to the “entire race”; “a nation is a collection of men…of the same make, and nature, and appetencies, and destiny, as ourselves” comprising but a “section of the great commonwealth of humanity, a phase of the common type of being, and no more” (“The Duty of a Rising Christian State” [FA], 59–60). The moral moment in our common destiny is to “go forward and upward” (63). The movement of national culture through time is thus singular (neither multiple nor diverse, even if diversely contributed to), progressive (movement leads to improvement), and ultimately unifying. It is as if “all the preceding generations of mankind, and all the various nations, have lived for every successive generation,” suggesting that there is “no absolute disseverance of individual nations” (63–64).