The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

GA 53 — 9 March 1905, Berlin

The Origin of the Earth

The lecture I will give today is a kind of continuation of the one I gave on the origin of man. Today we return to times that lie far in the distant past, and we return to concepts that are very far removed from current materialistic thinking. Therefore, please allow me to begin with a few introductory words about the relationship between my topic today and contemporary mental images.

It must be clear to anyone who has thoroughly studied and understands contemporary scientific knowledge that theosophical mental images about the origin of the earth can be regarded today as something very speculative, perhaps even very fantastical. But do not believe that, if one delves deeper into these matters, a real contradiction will emerge between scientific mental images and those espoused by theosophy, the spiritual science. We must be quite clear that the natural scientist is only able to examine and describe what takes place in the external sensory world and can be grasped by the scientific mind. I am of the firm opinion that, when it comes to such difficult questions as today's, even from a theosophical point of view, only those who are familiar with the entire natural science education of our time should speak, so that they have a mental image of how much they are going against common ideas. However, for all those who, from the standpoint of materialism or, let us say, a materialistic way of thinking, believe they can rebel against the more advanced views presented today, I would like to begin my lecture with an example of mutual understanding between people who are concerned with worldviews.

It was at the end of the 1860s, as you know, that a philosophy, pessimistic though it was, but decidedly idealistic in tone, made a deeper impression on a wider audience for the last time. It was Eduard von Hartmann's “Philosophy of the Unconscious.” I will only say what happened historically. Hartmann took a hard line against the worldviews that had emerged from Darwinism. When the men of that time saw what a great impression the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” made, many opposition writings appeared. Among these was one that appeared anonymously, entitled: "The Unconscious from the Point of View of Physiology and the Theory of Descent. " The most eminent philosophers said that it was the best work against Eduard von Hartmann and his philosophy. The work caused a great stir. Natural scientists were clear that it had been written by a natural scientist and that Eduard von Hartmann had been thoroughly refuted. Soon after, a second edition of the same anonymous work appeared, but this time with the author's name, namely Eduard von Hartmann! It was a clever hoax! I am not a Hartmannian or a follower of the philosophy of the unconscious, but this philosophy stands higher and contains more than can otherwise be put forward by pessimistic tendencies. Hartmann showed that one need only lower one's point of view in order to understand the matters in question much more deeply than one's opponents. In this way, spiritual science or theosophy could also express itself in the same way as those who believe themselves to be the best natural scientists. I have said this to show that theosophy could also be refuted in a similar way. However, this refutation could probably be better provided by theosophy itself than by anyone else.

We must now bear in mind that we are dealing with very difficult chapters today and that it is extremely laborious to penetrate these regions. However, it is even more difficult to find the appropriate means of expression within our language, which is shaped solely by the external sensory world. We must use every possible means to clothe the fine, subtle concepts and views taken from purely spiritual worlds in vivid language. Nevertheless, I would like to try to express what I know from experience in these higher realms in language that is as vivid and descriptive as possible. You will also find the relevant sections of the great world evolution described in theosophical literature. There, however, you will find them presented more schematically than I will do today. I have no objection to this schematic presentation, which also has its uses and provides the mind with clear concepts of this evolution. This can be learned from theosophical handbooks. However, I would like to describe it in a more vivid way.

We have seen that human beings appeared to us as completely different beings in ancient times, that they only gradually took on their physical form, and that their origin is not physical but spiritual. We have seen that the soul precedes the physical, that the soul develops within itself the powers through which it can gradually clothe itself in this physical garment. All this has been described. At the same time, we have pointed out that we can only trace human beings as they stand before us today back through a certain number of periods of time. We are now in the fifth period of our physical earthly development. It was preceded by another period, which took place on a continent that now forms the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. And this age, the Atlantean age, was in turn preceded by another, which we call the Lemurian age. And at that time, in the middle of Lemurian racial development, we find that what we now call our immortal spirit is actually connected with the human being as he had developed up to that point. This higher element, this higher being of the human being, which outlasts all physical corporeality, which also outlasts all soul development — in other words, the eternal in the human being — became established in human nature at that time, if we want to express it figuratively, as a spiritual spark, so that the human being up to that point appears to us as the connection between soul and body. Until the middle of this Lemurian population that lived on Earth in times long past, our human ancestors were physical-soul beings.

If we want to get a clear mental image of what these human ancestors were actually like, we must remember that what we call spirit is inseparably linked to all truly higher thinking. Without spirit, humans could not count; without spirit, humans could not speak; without spirit, no higher intellectual activity, let alone higher activities, would be possible. So that until then we are dealing with a human being who was waiting to become spiritually gifted, who did not yet have the immortal part, but who had a soul life that was completely different from our soul life today. Our present-day soul life is permeated by spirit. If we want to call the human being who was not yet spiritually gifted a human being — and for the sake of brevity we will do so — then we must say that his soul life was dull, that it was a more dreamy, pictorial soul life. The soul life of the human being of that time can only be understood if we trace it back a period of time. In the period I have just mentioned, human beings were able to take in external physical impressions and perceive their surroundings. This perception developed slowly and gradually.

If we trace the Lemurians back even further, we find that although human ancestors already had sensations, that external objects made an impression on them, they were unable to connect these external perceptions with any mental images. If you imagine a soul life similar to that which takes place during a dream, then you have something similar. But it is not quite the same. For the images that surged up and down in the soul at that time were much clearer, much more primitive and elementary, much more saturated than the confused dream images of the average person today. Above all, these images in the human soul were in a certain way dependent on what was happening around the human being. At that time, humans were not yet able to associate a color with an external object; they could not yet see things in color. They could not see that an object was green or red; the color image was not yet connected to the object. And yet colors surged in the human soul. These colors bore some resemblance to what the clairvoyant knows when he develops certain abilities within himself. The clairvoyant sees not only the outer physical body, but also the feelings and instincts in the form of an aura. The physical human being is only part of the human being. The physical human being is embedded as if in a cloud in which all kinds of form structures surge up and down. Only those who have the gift of clairvoyance in our theosophical sense — not in the sense of spiritualism — can see this. The next time I speak about the great initiates of the world, I will also make some remarks about the acquisition of such abilities. All true initiation can only be linked to the gift of clairvoyance. The abilities of the great initiates flowed from the gift of clairvoyance.

Today, before becoming a clairvoyant, one must be a reasonable person. One must be able to think logically and clearly. Anyone who would acquire the gift of clairvoyance without having trained the gift of rational, clear thinking would receive a terrible gift. Instead of being led into a higher, spiritual world, they would be led into a world of fantasies where they would lack any control, into a world that would stand before them like the dream world that stands chaotically before the dreamer. Only when one has acquired the habit of logical, clear, rational thinking, so that one moves among spiritual things as a rational person moves among tables and chairs, so that one no longer sees anything special in them, can one understand the gift of clairvoyance in today's sense as something that truly leads one deeper into the mysteries of the world. It is therefore the case that all secret schools require that the person be a very reasonable, perhaps even somewhat sober person, so that they are the opposite of what one would call a fantasist. That is why we say that clairvoyance, the recognition of the soul, the auric world, is linked to the development of our spiritual abilities.

The view of human beings as I have described it to you was similar in pre-lemurian times. But it lacked the permeation of consciousness. There was only a dim consciousness in human beings. At that stage, they already felt what warmth and cold were, they had a sense of touch and could perceive certain differences in density and impermeability. They also had the gift of hearing. The sense of hearing is one of the oldest senses that humanity has developed. But he did not yet have the sense of sight. This was still, so to speak, an inner sense. The idea of color lived spiritually within the human being. For example, when he came to a region that was colder than the one he had left, a color image of darker shades arose in his soul. If they did the opposite, coming from a colder layer of air into a warmer one, then there was a yellowish or yellowish-reddish color image. So those people had color images, but these were not connected to the surface of their bodies; rather, they lived as indefinite color images in their souls. This then connected with what surrounded them.

But human beings had something else at that time. They had a fine sensitivity to what was going on in their surroundings in terms of the soul. When we are here in a room, you are not just sitting there as physical bodies, but also as souls. Feelings and sensations live in each of you. And these are just as real as the physical body is real. What the human soul has today in terms of sensitivity can no longer penetrate these forces of feeling and sensation, because precisely through the further development of humanity, human beings have become brighter in their consciousness, because they have developed their intellect, their everyday perception. But for the time being, they have lost what was present in their souls. They will regain this ability while retaining their present rationality and clear daytime consciousness. All of humanity will one day attain a state that today only practical mystics and clairvoyants possess. In order to attain this state, humans had to pass through mere physical perception, through mere bodily perception. In one respect, humanity is reaching a higher level, and in another respect, it is descending to a deeper level in a certain sense.

Human beings started out with a dull, dim perception. But at the same time, this was a psychic, clairvoyant perception. If there was any sympathetic feeling, any soul life in the vicinity of a human being that—if you will pardon the expression—radiated sympathy, then the human being received those bright color images within themselves. Evil feelings caused darker color images to arise, tending toward blue, brownish, and reddish tones. That was the connection between the inner soul life and the outer soul reality of that time. But at that time, this outer soul reality could be perceived. Only gradually did the senses develop into what they are today. And with that, the intellect, the objective grasp of things, came into being. The original dim clairvoyant gift, on the other hand, receded. At the same time, we come to a period where, hand in hand with this development, another takes place: the development of so-called dual sexuality. Human beings were not always as they are today in terms of their reproductive capacity. The greater power that the soul had over the physical meant that humans could produce a being of the same kind from themselves without having to resort to another physical human being, because they united both sexes within themselves. Therefore, the transition at that time was both one of mutual perception and one from dual sexuality to single sexuality. At that time, the human brain was not yet developed in the same way as it is today. Humans were not yet the brain-based creatures they are today; nor did they have the same powers of perception that they have today. This is the time we have already spoken of, which is also the time of the creation of the human brain.

Last time, I indicated that we do not subscribe to Darwinism in its entirety. We subscribe to it insofar as it represents the kinship of the physical human being with all other physical creatures on earth. But I also indicated that we do not see the imperfect animal creatures that we have alongside us on earth as ancestors of present-day humans, nor of physical-soul human beings, let alone spiritual ones. Rather, we must see in these animal beings offshoots from a common ancestor who resembles neither today's human beings nor the imperfect living beings, the animals, that live around us today. At the time I have just spoken of, there were not yet any higher mammals on Earth. Like humans, higher mammals have only an imperfect brain and a power of perception similar to that of humans. Beings that had developed such a power of perception did not yet exist at that time. There were only beings on Earth with pictorial mental images, with a pictorial way of soul formation, and basically, as in a common junction, everything that is now human and higher animal kingdom was united in a single type of being. Insofar as he is a soul-physical being, man was, in a certain sense, on the level of animality. But no present-day animal, nor even present-day man, resembles the human beings of that time. Now, however, the human being has developed to such an extent that a part, a branch of the species of that time, has evolved into the human beings of today. Due to certain circumstances, which I will describe in detail another time, other members of the species of that time have remained behind. They have regressed in their development and become decadent. These decadent beings are what we recognize as the higher animals.

I would like to clarify this point and refer to the following: You know that there are regions where Catholicism has degenerated into a kind of fetishism, where it resembles the worship of inanimate objects or images of saints. Now, no one can claim that this point of view is the same as the more perfect one to which humanity has evolved. This fetish Christianity is a degenerate Christianity. From a theosophical point of view, this is also the case when we consider various “savage” tribes. Materialistic cultural history sees them as backward ancestors of civilized people. We see them as the degenerate, decadent descendants of once superior peoples. The same is true when we go further back in time with the higher animals. They were once more perfect, but they have degenerated. We arrive at a conception of the human realm that is different, that shows humans still undifferentiated from other higher animal species, but at a point in time that lies millions of years behind us.

How is it that humans stopped on their path of development at that time? In terms of their spiritual development, humans are entirely the result of what is happening around them. Imagine the room we are in with a temperature one hundred degrees higher, and imagine how different everything would be! If you extend this thought to all other natural conditions, it will show you that human beings are in truth completely dependent on the constellation and configuration of the forces within which they live. They become different beings when they are in a different context. - In recent times, scientific experiments have been carried out in which butterflies have been allowed to hatch at temperatures at which they would not normally live. It has been found that they change their colors and color shades. And at higher temperatures, even greater changes can be observed. Science today is already a kind of elementary theosophy. For theosophy, there is no contradiction between science and theosophy!

Thus, the stages of human development at that time also depended on the very different stages of development on our Earth. Even physicists tell you — as a hypothesis — that the further back we go in the Earth's development, the higher and higher the temperatures become. The theosophist or practical mystic now really looks back into these primeval times, and sees these conditions in what we call the Akashic Records as a truth, just as the average person sees tables and chairs as a truth before them. We come to a state in which all substances on our Earth are in completely different relationships to each other than they are today.

You know that when substances are heated, they change their state. Solid substances become liquid, liquid substances become vaporous, and so on. Now we are returning to immeasurably higher temperatures than we know today on Earth. The entire material world of our Earth was different then. Only those who are caught up in a materialistic view and are biased by their immediate perception of our Earth can come to the conclusion that this is impossible. Those who free themselves from what is our reality today will also realize that life was possible on Earth under these higher temperature conditions. Humans really did live under these higher temperature conditions, albeit in a completely different way. They lived in a state of “fire mist.” Their bodies were a vaporous, soft mass, a mass that cannot really be compared to what we know today. This brings us back to completely different conditions. These must be pursued further if we want to understand the origin of the Earth. This origin is closely connected with the entire development of humankind. If we go back, we find humans living alongside much lower animals, animals that belong to the lower classes of our present-day animal world, but which at that time had different forms and were of a different nature than their present-day descendants. As the earth became firmer and firmer, denser and denser, they took on different forms and different natures. Today, when we observe what is going on within us with the naked eye of our intellect, we have no mental image of what it looked like back then. Nevertheless, a world of animals lived around humans. And just as humans today take in nourishment from the physical world, they did so in a similar way back then.

Now we must be clear that for those who are completely unaccustomed to thinking in such mental images, what I am about to say may seem quite fantastical, even strange. Today, the time has come to speak of it once again. We are at a point in our development where an idealistic worldview will once again replace the purely materialistic one. As we go back to those times, the entire materiality of our earth will change. At that time, namely — I ask you not to be too surprised by what I am about to say — the earth's mass was still connected to other celestial bodies in a way that is not the case today. Even those who, without clairvoyant gifts, think through the physical mental images of our present to their logical conclusion will see that what I am about to say is not entirely contradictory. You need only go back, in the spirit of Kant-Laplace theory, to the time when the individual planets were not yet orbiting the sun, had not yet formed out of the primordial nebula, and you will have a bold but correct hypothesis. From the physicist's point of view, we can also go back to a time when the materiality of the earth was still in contact with the materiality of the entire solar system. At that time, human beings were much more closely related to everything than they are today. In the Akashic Records, we find that during this time, the earth was in a much more intimate material connection with another celestial body that orbits the earth today, namely the moon. There was a certain material connection between the Earth and the Moon.

If I may express myself roughly, what we now have as the Earth's mass was only formed when the coarse materiality that we have in the Moon, as it were, developed out of it. The two bodies differentiated themselves from each other. You can imagine what tremendous upheavals must have taken place in the entire material world! This cosmic upheaval is the counterpart, the correlate of what I have described, the correlate of the great living being whose separation and the associated change caused human beings to transition from unisexuality to bisexuality. The entire separation did not take place all at once. Unfortunately, reading theosophical literature gives so much cause to assume that it happened suddenly and completely, as if one celestial body simply burst out of the other. But it is not a violent development. Everything happened slowly and gradually, over millions and millions of years. But it is difficult to talk about numbers because one must become familiar with the methods used in the Secret Doctrine. If we go back even further, we find another connection that is even more difficult to imagine, more intimate than the connection that exists today between the sun and the earth. But it existed in an earlier time. Let us take a mental image that will make it somewhat easier for us to illustrate this connection a little more vividly. When you see the sun, when you think of the sun as limited within space as a result of your sensual mental image — is it really so limited? Even ordinary reflection can teach us that, basically, it is not possible to truly define the limits of the sun. Does the sun really cease to be a being, to be essential, where you see its limits? It does not cease there; its effect propagates throughout the entire planetary system. The sun has an effect on our earth. Do the etheric forces that propagate and make life possible on earth, do they not belong to the sun's body? Are these etheric forces not merely the continuation of the etheric forces of the sun? Or its gravitational pull? Does it not belong to the sun? We see that if we take a broader view of existence, we can understand that such arbitrary limitations do not apply when we speak of a celestial body such as the sun. The effects emanating from the sun were very different on Earth in earlier times than they were later, and different from what they are today. They were such that if someone could have sat on a chair and looked at the whole structure of the world — which is basically how physicists imagine it when they illustrate it to children — they would not have perceived the sun and the earth as separate bodies, but would have seen the whole filled with perceptible content; he would have seen that in later times the Earth crystallized out of the whole sun ball.

So when we go back to the distant past of the Earth, we come to a point where what is now deposited in the moon's matter was still connected with the Earth's matter, where the forces that have now been drawn out were still effective with the matter. These forces acted upon our physical bodies. They were such that they shaped them in such a way that they reacted to forces in a completely different way and that the effects on the physical body manifested themselves in a completely different way. And in even earlier times, the sun's effect on the Earth was completely different from what it is today, also in relation to growth. When the Moon and the Earth were still connected, all earthly beings were in a state that we only encounter in animals, which have approximately the same temperature as their environment. Warm blood begins to develop to the same extent as the Moon's matter withdraws from the Earth.

If we go further back in time, to when the sun was still connected to the earth, we find effects within the human ancestors of that time which have survived to this day only in very decadent forms in the lowest animals. At that time, humans reproduced through a kind of division process. Humans existed in very fine matter, in very fine physicality, even finer than the fire nebula. At that time, reproduction took place in a kind of constriction. The daughter being was also about the same size as the mother being. The sun's forces were also life forces. They overwhelmed the material. They imprinted forms on the material. So we see, when we go back to the origin of our Earth, to a time when humans were surrounded by ever finer and finer material states. Finally, we come to a state that only the clairvoyant can visualize, where the finest etheric physicality merges into what we call astral being; as pure soul beings, human beings were placed in the earthly scene. Human beings who were shaped in the same way as the physical aura is shaped were placed in the earthly scene. Powers were at work in the soul that imprinted forms on matter by absorbing it and shaping it so that it became an outer seal, a kind of shadow of what the souls were in the pure soul realm. And now we have returned to the stage of our Earth where human beings did not yet have physical materiality, where human beings as astral beings first entered this physical world, which at that time was of an extremely fine nature. Now we could go back to even much older states in which human beings did not yet have this astral mode of existence. We could go back to purely spiritual states. But that should not interest us now, for we do not want to follow human beings, but the origin of the earth.

A few more words about going backwards. We encounter human beings there, so to speak, without a material earth. They are not yet embodied in physical bodies. We would have to go back a long way if we wanted to encounter humans in their earlier stages of development. Humans, who are placed on Earth as soul beings, have the ability to attract matter in a very specific way. If one could examine etheric humans, one would perceive that their souls were already organized. They were already able to form shapes. To do this, it had to develop over long periods of time. It had already gone through long stages of development earlier. These were, of course, completed on other world bodies. But now — how are we to form a mental image of such a development on other world bodies? All the abilities that the soul had acquired were such that they could work in the physical world. It was guided by earlier stages of development. The soul must have gone through physical states several times, because certain abilities can only be developed within the physical world. Human beings today would not be able to speak or think if they had not come into contact with physical nature. What we work on today will later become our abilities. I have often pointed this out by way of comparison: through the child who learns to write and read. When the child has grown up, it can write and read. What was previously work, communication with the outside world, has disappeared, but the fruit, the result, has remained. And that is the ability to write, the ability to read. What we have in our soul has come about through communication with the outside world.

Theosophical worldview calls this involution. And when a person works out from within what they have acquired, we call that evolution. All life takes place between involution and evolution. What the soul has done in evolution is based on the abilities that have emerged from the soul. These abilities were once acquired through involution. This involution took place again in another physical body. We have an important moment that occurred on our Earth; it is the moment when, through the emergence of the moon matter, human beings were able to transform themselves from cold-blooded beings into warm-blooded beings. This is the important point in the development of the Earth. This is emphasized in all mystical schools. Human beings take in warmth and transform it within themselves. The myth, which always depicts the great truths figuratively, has preserved this for us in the Prometheus legend. Prometheus brought fire down from heaven. What he brought down was the warmth of human beings, not external fire. In the same way, all other abilities had to be brought down from heaven by human beings.

I would like to lead you to another point that is also very important for the development of the earth. This is the moment when human beings take in what we previously learned about as the inner soul. We have seen that images arose in human beings, which they later connected with objects. This ability to develop light within themselves was inherent in human beings in the early days. They acquired it earlier, just as they later acquired the ability to develop warmth. To perceive light around them as existence in the first place, or better said, to perceive the objects around them in the existence of light, humans developed this ability on a planet that theosophical worldview calls the “moon.” But this was not our physical moon. Once the soul had acquired the ability to generate inner light, the connection was there, and anyone familiar with the conditions of that time knows that it gave rise to the soul's ability to see colors and to glow inwardly. We must first understand how these abilities are connected. The development of warmth is connected with all life on our earth; the development of warmth is connected with the present mode of reproduction, with the way in which human beings can bring something into real existence. Everything else is a combination; only reproduction is real creation, and that is connected with warmth. Similarly, we have a similar stage of development with the appearance of inner light. Human beings developed this glow on an earlier planet. It was a glow from within, just as today it is warmth from within. It was a glow. And with that we have arrived at the most outstanding characteristic of the human being in its pre-physical state on another celestial body. Everything that emanated from human beings was itself a glow, just as their aura glows today. Human beings were luminous beings, and their perception consisted in the perception of their own glow. At that time, the glow had developed down to the physical level. It was a physical glow of human beings.

How do we get our most exquisite mental images of the environment? Precisely through visual perceptions. You would lose about nine-tenths of what you know if you eliminated visual perceptions. Because we have visual mental images today, wisdom can flow into us. It was different for our lunar ancestors. Light flowed out from them. What emanated from them was the same as what flows into us today with the effect of light. In mystical mythology, our Earth is called the cosmos of love because it is connected with the forces of love. And this cosmos of love was preceded by the cosmos of wisdom, in which light played the same role as warmth does today. The Earth followed the cosmos of wisdom as the cosmos of love. What inner light is depends on the will of the human being. The human being, who has certain drives, passions, sensations, and feelings within themselves, endows their aura, their astral body, with certain color formations. These are subject to what is called, in a broader sense, the will. At that time, in the lunar period, the whole human being was an expression of the will. The will flowed outward and appeared as that which shines. Therefore, if we call these people of the cosmos of wisdom human beings, our ancestors are the sons of the will. The children of love are thus descended from the sons of the will. Light played a similar role then as warmth does on Earth today.

These luminous human beings within the luminous environment are also called the sons of twilight. A particularly luminous human being within the surrounding light, a shining together, an exchange, was like the exchange of warmth we have today. Just as we feel cold when it is cold today, people had a similar feeling when it was darker around them than within themselves. The will was what underlay this, because the will was what was basically expressed in the whole environment. Just as human beings today are creative through love, so in those days human beings were still creative through their will. Their will had a direct influence on their entire environment. As powerless as people are today in creating physical things in the outside world, because they have attained clarity in their consciousness and thereby their other soul forces have become imperfect, so powerful was the will in those days. The will of human beings had an influence on the entire physical environment. And because he strives and the tendency in evolution is upward, this will strove toward the higher. This brought about, directly from living nature, what divided the center of the world body of that time into two, so that even then a kind of inversion took place. In a more spiritual sense, the one center became two centers. And we see this separation of the centers realized in later development in the separation of the Earth and the Moon.

These are sketchy hints that I have been able to give you. But you will see that the things agree with each other. Anyone who strives to think consistently and rigorously will be able to admit this from the outset. I could refute this myself, as I indicated at the beginning with regard to Eduard von Hartmann. Habits of thought are temporary. Anyone who studies history, and not just the external history, because the picture we are given of the Middle Ages, for example, is a false one, will find my explanations confirmed. Goethe also says that, basically, it is only the spirit of the masters themselves in which the times are reflected. The task of theosophy is to show the development in the past in order to gain a mental image of the great future of humanity. I have quoted Goethe because he looked deeply into these mystical, mysterious connections in the development of the world. He used a remarkable figure, the “old man with the lamp” in the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” The lamp can only shine where there is already other light. I have presented this to you as the embodiment of ancient wisdom. Now we come to an even deeper meaning. Now we understand what Goethe means by light that only spreads its glow where there is light. Where the gift of clairvoyance is developed again, this lamp develops its full magical power. We come to that time when human beings became flames, looking back on that epoch when human beings were luminous beings, when they developed the ability to bring light into existence. Goethe knew that this inner light once existed in human beings and that today's vision of light is a later stage of development.

Before humans could see the sun, they first had to become inner luminous beings; they had to develop light within themselves in order to bring light to light. Goethe was a mystic, but people don't know it. At the beginning of his preface to his Theory of Colors, he expresses this by using the words of an ancient mystic:

Were not the eye sun-like,
How could we behold the light?
Did not God's own power live within us,
How could the divine delight us?