  Language plays a central role in this process, echoing the point he makes about the English language in Africa. “Words are vital things,” explained Crummell, since they are “always generative of life or death” and cannot “enter the soul as passive and inoperative things” (19).  Moreover, to be limited in word and thought is to undermine moral reasoning, which is the condition of the “savage.” On the other hand, the “changed circumstances” of blacks generate “an immense budget of new thoughts, new ideas, new projects, new purposes, new ambitions, of which our fathers never thought” (19–20).