Note 34 — Chapter III · (continued 5)

What Hegel means to say by this and the following paragraph is by no means clear. He first seems to state as a fact that a rivalry may be asserted, or at least has been asserted by others, between the Spanish romances and the finest Greek and Latin epic literature, and then immediately afterwards denies the fact so far as the Iliad and Odyssey is concerned. The confusion and indeed uncertainty seems to be due to the fact that while explaining the disadvantage in which the German work is placed as compared with the Spanish romances, he merely contrasts the Homeric poems with the former. What he apparently means us to infer is that the latter are as superior as the German work is, at least as an Epos, inferior. The words "we moderns" are apparently ironical. In any case the entire passage is, I think, clearly one which needed revision, and it is possible that the two paragraphs have been tacked together by Hegel's editors from different connections.