Note 17 — Part I
Reading edition
W. P., Vol. II, p. 76. Hegel was also approaching this truth when he said, in his introduction to the Vorlesungen über Æsthetik (pp. 58, 59 of the translation of that Introduction by B. Bosanquet): "Man is realized for himself by poetical activity, inasmuch as he has the impulse, in the medium which is directly given to him, and externally presented before him, to produce himself. This purpose he achieves by the modification of external things upon which he impresses the seal of his inner being. Man does this in order, as a free subject, to strip the outer world of its stubborn foreignness, and to enjoy, in the shape and fashion of things, a mere external reality of himself."