In all these three stages of honour, love, and fidelity, we shall find the soil on which the self-subsistency of personality, the soul, is supported, an independence which, however, constantly unfolds in a wider and more affluent content, remaining in the same self-reconciled. Here stretches before us in romantic art the fairest strip of country which we can find anywhere outside the enclosure of religion in its strict sense, Its objects are concerned with that which is simply human, a relation with which we can at least from one aspect of it, namely, that of personal freedom, absolutely sympathize, and we do not find here, as we do now and again in the religious field, both a material and modes of representation which clash with our modern notions. But at the same time we must add that our present subject matter may very frequently be brought into direct relation to religion so that religious interests are interwoven with those of the world of chivalry; as, for example, was the case in the adventures of the knights of the round table in their quest of the Holy Grail. In this interfusion we find not only much that is mystical and fantastical, but also much that is allegorical added to the poetry of chivalry. And conversely this secular sphere of the interests of love, honour, and fidelity may also be totally unconnected with the deepening of their content with religious aims and opinions, and only bring to view the earliest movement of soul-life in the secular aspect of its spiritual intensity. That which, however, drops away from the present levels is the repletion of this inner life with the concrete content of human conditions, characters, passions, and realized existence generally. In contrast to this variety the essentially infinite soul still remains abstract and formal, and has therefore in front of it the task, to accept as part of its own this further material with what it held before, and to exhibit the same in the forms congenial to artistic composition.
[241] He has not in this exclusive sense of religiosity identified himself with the spirit of the Christian community. Der Anderen refers to Gemeinschaft. Such appears to me the sense.
[242] Zur Wirklichkeit entfaltetes Leben.
[243] Put more simply we may say in popular terminology that it is filled up or amplified by virtue of the sense of individual personality. This Hegel himself further elucidates below. Falstaff undoubtedly possessed a strong personality, but in his famous soliloquy on honour he deliberately emptied himself of any sense of it by refusing to view himself under the self-relation, that is self-respect.
[244] I fail to appreciate this distinction, except in a very qualified form. Even in the Middle Ages when the feudal relation was in full force, the relation between the master and the servant was surely one of the institutions of the State, though no doubt the rights of the dependent were not always very readily enforced. Even in the case of slavery in the Southern States of America the relation between master and slave carried with it quite definite ethical obligations—there was in general at least quite a distinct social if not actually political status.
[245] I suppose Hegel means by ein Punkt a centre or point of life. The expression is rather unusual.
[246] Absoluten Geltung, that is its absolute validity in its ideal character.
[247] The punctuation in text is defective.
[248] So runs the text. It comes from such a writer with a shock. Why such qualities should vanish (schwinden) in the presence of unhappiness it is not easy to see. It would rather appear that such was the condition to evoke them. What is meant is, I suppose, that the failure of reciprocity, especially in the love of women, often brings complete collapse. We may illustrate it in several of Meredith's novels such as "Diana" and "Sandra Belloni."