  The third step in the Natural Rights Argument holds that any being endowed with the “light of reason” that exercises the various “exalted attributes” of reason possesses certain peculiar rights on the “ground of their nature.” This explicit confidence in the powers of reason that drives the argument is important to Crummell, and is the main reason he and Hume do not travel far together in this discussion. But Crummell needs this sort of rationalistic account, given that reason is our faculty for discovering such logical connections as that between circumstantial fact and abstract right, making it essential to the inferences that justify that right in human affairs. It is one thing to observe that such-and-such is the case, as one might in reviewing the facts of the Amistad case. But it is quite another to articulate a pre-existing right, abstract at least in the sense that it requires calling up, even if (as Crummell claims) it has a basis in our sentimental nature. Presumably one needs the ability to reflect on general principles of action, surely a subtle rational power, as well as the reasoning required to apply such reflection to the facts observed. Such coordinated thinking and observing could then be brought to cases such as the Amistad, where one could argue that the general principle that holds that self-defense is permissible applies to these very facts.