When I was a very young assistant professor, a student once asked me why in the world I’d want to devote my professional life to teaching a language and a culture that are blotted by such an evil past. At the time, I was completely taken aback by that question, and I’m afraid I didn’t have a good answer. But I’ve never forgotten the question. And in fact over time I’ve come to my own understanding of how it is that the same civilization that produced the unspeakable horrors of the death camps was also able to bring forth the sublime beauty of a Mozart aria and the boisterous might of a Beethoven symphony. The answer — my answer — is actually a pretty scary one: every society — and every single individual– has within us the capacity for good along with an attendant potential for evil. German history offers the best proof of that. Being — becoming — civilized humans involves, more than anything else, making sure that in our own individual lives good overcomes evil. In a truly enlightened civilization, Mozart always wins out over Hitler.

In part for that reason, undergraduate education isn’t meant to be job training. It’s a one-time, four-year window of opportunity to explore things that are new and exciting. Follow your heart and follow your mind. Your heart will tell you what you love, and your mind will tell you what you’re good at. If they’re both saying the same thing, then you absolutely have to follow, no matter where they may lead you — yes, even if it’s not toward things German.

It’s not politically correct to say this, but there really is a canon — a body of poems and plays and music and paintings that are timeless and intrinsically uplifting and full of beauty. And those beautiful things — Rilke’s elegies and Schiller’s dramas and Bach’s cantatas — will all still be there after we individual human beings, even you who are now so young, are long gone from the stage of life. Ars longa, vita brevis — art is long lasting, life is short. That’s a humbling thought, but at the same time it’s an amazingly reassuring one.

Even two-hundred years into their own immortality, the resounding words of Schiller, made famous by the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, still manage to stir us: Alle Menschen werden Brüder — “All humans become brothers.” In recent months Americans have witnessed the first-ever presidential primary season in which both a woman and a person of color have a realistic shot at winning the White House. Regardless of your political views and regardless of the ultimate outcome in November, that very possibility in itself marks a sea change in our own self-conception as a society. Schiller and Beethoven would surely be proud of us! And of course those of us whose job it is to mediate, as teachers, between the post-Enlightenment world of Germany and twenty-first-century America are keenly aware of — and discomfited by — the exclusionist language of Schiller’s poem: we very much want to add, at the end “…and sisters!” The mere fact that we feel the urge to update time-honored wisdom means that, though we surely don’t yet live in a truly post-racial or post-gender society, we are nonetheless inching forward toward that noble goal.

Yet even while striving toward such utopian societal harmony, don’t be afraid to be different and to challenge the status quo. If Gutenberg had conformed, he would never have had the courage and the pluck to endure all manner of roadblocks in his quest to perfect the technique of moveable type — and ultimately the printing press. Would we still be communicating by hand-written documents if Gutenberg hadn’t scraped and struggled to make this revolutionary technique workable and profitable? Of course not. Someone else would eventually have come along and done it in his stead. But that’s just the point: it always takes someone ready to think outside the box and to contest the way things have conventionally been done. Most of us will never have the chance to be a Gutenberg, but many of us can change some of the little things during our lifetimes. So be Faust-like in your striving to achieve goals that appear unattainable. But never make a deal with the Devil – or with any of the metaphorical devils that are waiting out there to compromise your ideals.

And finally, passion: as you look toward the world beyond our cozy little ivory tower, always invest a full measure of passion in all that you undertake. Don’t plod through life. Make certain that you have passions in whatever you do — large or small. Don’t hold back from making a full, joyful — and passionate! — commitment to the people and the things and the ideals in your life. Choose wisely what you love, and love with a full measure of passion.

You and I have spent the last semester exploring the history of early America. We started with the retreat of the glaciers and ended with the Revolution and Constitution. By reading thousands of pages, taking copious notes, writing papers and enduring exams you have accumulated enough historical facts to hold your own in a game of Trivial Pursuit, wow your friends at the next cocktail party, or make a decent try at The New York Times crossword. The facts you have learned are important, but by themselves they are not history.

To study history we need to discover not only what people did in the past but why they acted as they did. Their actions and their principles crafted our world. If we are to appreciate the possibilities of our own time then we need to uncover the values and principles that guided them so that we may embrace, reject or alter that which we have inherited.

Texts convey values and define a people. In the last few weeks we have read together several key documents which I hope have helped to unravel the past for you. For the moment I want to reflect on three of these texts that define what America means, the Mayflower Compact, John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity” and Roger Williams’ “Letter to the Town of Providence.”

On November 11, 1620 the Pilgrim leaders gathered in the cabin of the Mayflower. In the lee of Cape Cod they drew up and signed their “Compact.” Although it began in the name of God and the King this document’s authority rested with those who signed it. “We … do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves into a civil Body Politick.” By this act, these people, the spiritual ancestors for all Americans, laid the foundation for the most fundamental value in American politics - “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

A decade after the Mayflower Compact another group of English men and women came ashore not far from where we sit today. They called their new home Boston. Before they arrived their leader John Winthrop spoke to them about their mission. “we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together. … For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.” Winthrop’s values centered on care and compassion for one another.

And then there is Roger Williams the founder of Rhode Island. Williams was an independent man who in a time of religious orthodoxy proclaimed “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.” In 1655 he wrote to the Town of Providence to affirm his belief in “liberty of conscience” telling the townspeople “There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and wore is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth. It hath fallen out sometimes, that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; upon which I affirm, that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.” Roger Williams’ defense of “liberty of conscience” is a value we enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution.

As you continue to read history and develop your own values remember the Pilgrims, John Winthrop and Roger Williams. In the face of extraordinary challenges they held to a set of values which we share today. This is the message I want you to take from this class. This is the past I urge you to embrace.