[52] Professor Bosanquet translates sinnliche here as "sensitive." I am inclined to think that Hegel here rather leaves out of sight the fact that in the process of Nature we have sensitive organic life no less than unconscious inorganic. His contrast is rather between the conscious life of man and unconscious nature, the conscious life that is not self-conscious being for the object of the contrast treated as equivalent to unconscious. He would also apparently ignore the fact that man himself and the higher beauty which attaches to him is also from ope point of view a part of the natural process.
[53] That is, apart from purely personal ends in its pursuit, which are accidental to its essential notion.
[54] That is, in the medium of conscious life.
[55] Einmal. They are there, but they do not know they are there.
[56] Aus geistiger Bildung, i.e., a high level of mental culture is necessary before the advent of civilized manners and customs in which spiritual life is reflected with real refinement and directness.
[57] Bedürfniss zur Kunst.
[58] Lit., "In the form of the most abstract single subjectivity." That is to say, that the main fact about it is that it is felt; but, except in respect to intensity, it cannot be described as an object of thought with defining attributes, It is abstract individual sensation.
[59] By the expression Kreis Hegel would mean rather an indefinite sphere than a definite circle. The simile is perhaps not very apt. The idea, apparently, is of a sphere of feeling, that is, such as being self-complete, but is so abstract or indefinable that the introduction into it of positive ideas such as justice, etc., are the mere entrance of spectral forms which vanish in such an indefinable medium, without disclosing their nature. They are felt but not cognized for what they really are.
[60] Blinder, blind in the sense that it is not guided by deliberate and self-conscious reason, i.e., mere animal instinct.
[61] A difficult sentence to translate. I have followed Professor Bosanquet in assuming that the substantive with which mangelhaft agrees must be borrowed from the following sentence, though it seems also to be carried on in a loose kind of way from the previous sentence (Gesckmacksinn.) The entire sentence is built, as we have it, on the further confusion that there are two parallels which before the sentence ends are regarded as one! That is to say, the general critical sense is contrasted with the critique of particular works of art and further the defect of that general sense in its neglect of universal principles is further contrasted with the way the specific critique deals with particular works. I hardly think, however, that my admirable predecessor is justified in ignoring the comparative degree of bestimmteres, or in his translation of Zeug as "power." I take it to mean the material of actual works of art. The sentence is a good example of, some of the difficulties of Hegel translation.