The Eternal Jew

HISTORY STILL MATTERS Bill Moyers I am fascinated by what I see in the rear view mirror of experience. The future, being a mystery, excites, but the past instructs. When I was a student at the University of Texas, one of the favorite campus legends concerned a professor of anthropology, whose great power was in bringing the past alive through his brilliant lectures on the ascent of the human species. Once, when he had been holding forth on a certain phase of evolution, a student in the rear of the room raised his hand and said, "Professor, I just don't see what difference it would have made if my great- great-great grandfather had been an ape." And the professor shot back: ~It would have made a significant difference to your great-great-great grand- mother."