*

Of fundamental significance as regards method is the way in which
Goethe goes on from the passage quoted above to speak of the activity
of the inner light: 'This immediate affinity between light and the eye
will be denied by none; to consider them identical in substance is less
easy to comprehend. It will be more intelligible to assert that a
dormant light resides in the eye, and that this light can be excited by
the slightest cause from within or from without. In darkness we can, by
an effort of imagination, call up the brightest images; in dreams,
objects appear to us as in broad daylight; if we are awake, the
slightest external action of light is perceptible, and if the organ
suffers a mechanical impact light and colours spring forth.'

What Goethe does here is nothing less than to follow the development of
sight to where it has its true origin. Let us remember that a general
source of illusion in the modern scientific picture of the world lies
in the fact that the onlooker-consciousness accepts itself as a
self-contained ready-made entity, instead of tracing itself genetically
to the states of consciousness from which it has developed in the
course of evolution. In reality, the consciousness kindled by outer
sense-perception was preceded by a dreaming consciousness, and this by
a sleeping consciousness, both for the individual and for humanity as a
whole. So, too, outer vision by means of the physical apparatus of the
eye was preceded by an inner vision. In dreams we still experience this
inner vision; we use it in the activity of our picture-forming
imagination; and it plays continuously upon the process of external
sight. Why we fail to notice this when using our eye in the ordinary
way, is because of that dazzling process mentioned earlier in this
book. Goethe's constant endeavour was not to become the victim of this