  History, to Crummell's mind, is the series of events that concerns the progress of civilization. As various groups produce their symbolic institutions, and as those national cultures improve humanity's state of civilization, forward progress is being achieved, and the back-and-forth of ordinary life is getting closer to achieving the fundamental pre-existing nature of things as they really are. Crummell clearly subscribes (as did Plato) to a strong version of this view of history. On Plato's version, the ordinary events we now simply call “history”—wars, recessions, presidential elections, etc.—are part of the changing world of approximations and inexactness. As such, they are in flux, becoming one thing after another, but never actually being anything permanent. But the pre-existing principles that underwrite moral reasoning are timeless and unchanging—and hence permanent.  History cannot be about what is transient, despite the passage of time it implies; rather, it is about what endures through the passage of time.