  It thus becomes easier to discern Crummell's larger view about how a people can impact the course of history. The active Mental and Moral Principles of reason start a cycle, causing a people so stirred to satisfy conditions of intellectual and moral enlightenment. Once they are enlightened, reason itself—considered as an abstract, global resource, the main active force in history—increases in its civilizing potential. Thus the history of reason moves forward as a vital, active principle, completing a feedback loop. For blacks to affect history, they must become civilized, and propagate civilizing reason to push history forward. (As I describe above, this process is part of each generation's obligations to posterity within the course of history.) Fortunately the Social Principle and its corollaries optimize the chances of that happening.