omes
the flame to look back to this epoch in which he was a luminous being
when the ability developed to bring light into existence. Goethe knew
that this internal light was there once in the human being and that
the present-day seeing of light is a later developmental state.
Before the human being could
see the sun, he had to become an internally luminous being first; he
had to develop light in himself to show light to the light. Goethe was
a mystic; one does not know it only. At the head of his preface to the
theory of colours he pronounces it using the words of an old mystic:
Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own force lived in us,
How could delight us the divine?