  Crummell is not pessimistic though, since religious conversion faces similar obstacles, and often succeeds despite them. The “employment of all indigenous agency,” he announces, is that “great principle which lies at the basis of all successful propagation of the Gospel” (437). The solution to the dilemma is for the enlightened to be racially and psychologically similar to the would-be enlightened. “[M]en of like sentiments, feelings, blood and ancestry” are required for moral enlightenment, and hence are necessary for moral change. It is intriguing that his analysis does not demand affinity of thought between the enlightened and the target for moral improvement, a condition it seems reasonable to insist on. Sentiments and feelings go to sympathy, whereas blood and ancestry go to racial similarity; neither is mental. Interestingly, the collision between restricted cause and restricted effect amplifies the importance of moral reason's indifference to this or that race's particular nature, even as it is put to use in precisely those situations where such differences are definitive (racial contact most notably).