SOURCE: McCumber, John. “Writing Down (Up) the Truth: Hegel and Schiller at the End of the Phenomenology of Spirit.” In Essays on Jewish and German Literature and Thought in Honor of Géza von Molnár: “The Spirit of Poesy,” edited by Richard Block and Peter Fenves, pp. 47-59. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, McCumber maintains that Hegel's emendations to a poem by Friedrich Schiller at the end of Phenomenology of Spirit were made to fit in with the philosophical message of his book.

The Phenomenology of Spirit seems to end with the words of Friedrich Schiller, not of its author:

aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiches schäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit(1) 

From the chalice of this realm of spirits Foams forth to him his infinitude 

But only seems to. The quotation is from the first stanza of Schiller's “Die Freundschaft.” But as it stands here...