  Raising the stakes for moral change is Crummell's belief that no single individual ever accomplished anything epochal; “everywhere we find that the great things of history have been accomplished by the combination of men” (“The Social Principle Among a People” [DR], 31). This is also the case for such moral achievements as abolishing slavery. It took “the masses of the godly” to be “marshaled to earnest warfare” to create moral change on a grand scale (32). Thus, significant moral change occurs only in the context of social efforts. This is natural given the Social Principle, as Crummell calls it: that “disposition which leads men to associate and join together for specific purposes; the principle which makes families and societies, and which binds men in unity and brotherhood, in races and churches and nations” (31). We are social by nature, since our native “sympathies and affections” are the source of our “desire for companionship.” And this can't be opted out of: we were “formed” with “a fitness and proclivity for association, …a nature that demanded society.”