VI. Christ and the 20th Century

If the twentieth century would but regard the glorious realities of man’s inner life in a serious light it would understand the Christ-Event, and no more be in conflict with the concept and verity of those happenings which take place during the soul’s rebirth into a higher sphere. Spiritual Science would then prove that the same actual principles underlie all historic progress and development, as obtained in the case of external natural phenomena and occurrences. With regard to man’s ideas concerning the cosmos, he has fallen into that very error which finds expression in the words of Schopenhauer:—‘The world is my own conception.’ This statement implies that we are surrounded by a universe of colour, sound, and so forth, dependent entirely upon the action of the eye and other sense organs for its being. But if we seek to comprehend the world in its totality, it is not true to say:—‘All colour has existence only in virtue of the physical constitution of the eye.’ For the organ of sight would not be there, if the light had not first conjured it into being. If, on the one hand, it is true that the sensation of light be determined by the eye’s structure, then, on the other hand, it is equally true that the eye has been created by the light through the sun’s action. Both of these verities must therefore be involved in one incomprehensible reality. Thus do we realize the truth underlying Goethe’s words, when he says:—