  Whatever the right interpretation, his view of the nature of civilization will figure into his thinking. Crummell saw each generation as having an obligation to posterity, namely, to contribute to civilization, much the way a farmer has to work the soil to produce a harvest; failure to do so leads to the death of the land, so to speak, and the same is true for civilization. To contribute, though, requires resources (cognitive and linguistic ones included), cultivated in a public discourse that makes value and meaning, held among common people, from which intellectuals emerge and draw. (This anticipates Du Bois' “talented tenth” idea.) Crummell thought blacks, devastated by slavery, were severely incapacitated and hence couldn't produce in the general population the seeds for that intellectual emergence and civilization. One response could be to assign blame for this woeful state of affairs, as just discussed. Crummell would certainly not disagree that hindrances to blacks led to this cultural derailment and subsequent defect (as he saw it). But his concern was with the resources themselves: how could blacks regroup and make up lost ground? Hence his preoccupation with the cognitive resources rather than with accusation and protest. (The activist Douglass provides a ready contrast.)