  It is clear that Crummell thinks races ought to make nations as their instrument of civilizing uplift, but it is nowhere evident that he thinks races are the objects of that uplift. Instead, civilization is a good in itself, and ought to frame the political goals of a free nation. The principle that makes this go is “that organic principle of being which binds the present to the future, under a sense of duty and responsibility” (“First Fathers,” 141). He isn't shy at any point in his analysis. The problem of moral flourishing is one that has a political-institution component, but it is just as obvious to him that it has a metaphysical component, namely the linkage through time of human actions and how they bear on future effects. “According to the organization of our being,” he observes, “we are unable to confine ourselves to the mere brief period of life allotted us in this world. No man can thus make his life a disconnected, isolated unit” (141). This part of the argument proceeds in several stages. First, since human action is diachronic, so too is human agency. And second, since human kinds (races) have a cultural and moral component, agency is not without contextualizing factors, as “one generation is, of necessity, the framer and shaper of both the character and the destiny of another” (145–46). This obligates present agents since “the character of a people is a continuous and integral quality” shared by ancestor and descendant alike. Hence Crummell lays the groundwork for his moral progressivism, especially as it applies to blacks. The remaining difficulty is to explain how moral change is possible.