wholly brought under the ancient conception. It would seem truer to admit that in the spirit at least of the "Œdipus Coloneus" we have, at least in so far as that reconciliation is objective, and not merely a reconciling influence on our minds, the spectators, as in the case of the deaths of King Lear or Cornelia, in the sense that "death makes all things sweet," a mysterious approach to problems which Christianity first attempted seriously to solve, and which are usually regarded as insoluble without the assumption of a future state, or at least a divine absorption. Even admitting that Œdipus in his death became a real constituent of the harmonious unity of the civic life that received him, we cannot with truth say that such a reconciliation was one in which he shared personally, and whereof he was conscious, except in so far as he was aware of this by prevision; and to that extent the reconciliation was not in his death, but rather, as in the Christian view, a condition of the soul, a conviction that by his death he would live again,--almost identical in fact with some modern interpretations of immortality.]
[Footnote 53: Hegel means the conflict between the universal social interest and the private interest, between the concrete social life and the wholly private life.]
[Footnote 54: I think this gives the nearest approach I can make to the self-coined word _Grundwohlseyns_, lit., "the at bottom well being."]
[Footnote 55: _Subjektiven Substantialität._ Ideal, that is, as opposed to a substantive content based on the facts of living people.
Impersonations of qualities imagined rather than portraits of living men, ideal therefore in a theoretic and bad sense.]
[Footnote 56: As previously stated I adopt Hegel's expression, being unable to express it otherwise better. The whole emotional condition is more or less the meaning, but it is rooted in Greek literature.]
[Footnote 57: _In dieser Bestimmtheit_, lit., in this particular definition of their content.]
[Footnote 58: Hegel may mean that the passions are opposed to each other. The nett result is the same.]
[Footnote 59: Lit., "Is made the tragic lever."]
[Footnote 60: The epithet might mean also "suggestive of personal irritation," but the other epithets rather negative this rendering.]
[Footnote 61: _Räderwerk._ The whole of this passage, in its theoretical analysis, is extremely difficult not merely to translate, but to follow clearly.]
[Footnote 62: I presume this is the meaning of _Pursche_ or _Bursche_, and not merely "youngster."]
[Footnote 63: Abstract in the sense that the vices are detached in their extreme from concrete human nature.]
[Footnote 64: I have made the best I can of a very badly expressed sentence, and, as I should add, a very meagre description of the aim of modern comic drama. I am, however, not quite satisfied that it is an adequate translation, or that I have grasped what Hegel means by the words _nicht gestehen zu wollen_. It would apply very aptly to such a character as Sir Willoughby Patterne, but the pertinency of such an epithet as _lang empfunden_ I fail to see. I doubt myself if we have here anything more than a chance note of Hegel tacked in by editors.
The whole of the present paragraph is a very jejune description of the treatment of the love passion or affairs of honour by modern drama. A pity we cannot supplement it with the substance of Meredith's "Essay on Comedy." The passage, however, must be read as qualified by the further note lower down on the exuberance of one aspect of modern comedy. But the reference to "Comedy" in the modern sense is a mere fragment.]
[Footnote 65: That is, self-conscious life. The Absolute here seems to be identified with man's self-conscious activity.]
[Footnote 66: I think this is what Hegel must mean here by _im Elemente der Wirklichkeit_, in the element, that is, of material reality.]