[1] First described by the Turk, Hajji Khalifa, in the 17th century;
first seen by the Swedish traveller Otter in 1736, and first
published in 1840 in Ritter's _Erdkunde_, iii., after a drawing by
Major Fischer, made in 1837.
[2] The "Niobe" statue near Manisa was not definitely known for
"Hittite" till 1882, when G. Dennis detected pictographs near it.
[3] The "pseudo-Sesostres" of Herodotus, already demonstrated
non-Egyptian by Rosellini. The second figure was unknown, till found
by Dr Beddoe in 1856.
[4] Five intramural graves were explored at Sinjerli, but whether of
the Hittite or of the Assyrian occupation is doubtful.
[5] The Assyrian records, as well as the Egyptian, distinguish many
peoples in both areas from the Kheta-Khatti; and the most we can
infer from these records is that there was an occasional league
formed under the Hittites, not any imperial subjection or even a
continuous federation.
[6] _Pseudo-Hethitische Kunst_ (Berlin, 1890).
HITTORFF, JACQUES IGNACE (1792-1867), French architect, was born at
Cologne on the 20th of August 1792. After serving an apprenticeship to a
mason in his native town, he went in 1810 to Paris, and studied for some
years at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a favourite pupil of
Belanger, the government architect, who in 1814 appointed him his
principal inspector. Succeeding Belanger as government architect in
1818, he designed many important public and private buildings in Paris
and also in the south of France. From 1819 to 1830 in collaboration with
le Cointe he directed the royal fetes and ceremonials. After making
architectural tours in Germany, England, Italy and Sicily, he published
the result of his observations in the latter country in the work
_Architecture antique de la Sicile_ (3 vols., 1826-1830; new edition,
1866-1867), and also in _Architecture moderne de la Sicile_ (1826-1835).
One of his important discoveries was that colour had been made use of in
ancient Greek architecture, a subject which he especially discussed in
_Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs_ (1830) and in _Restitution du
temple d'Empedocle a Selinunte_ (1851); and in accordance with the
doctrines enunciated in these works he was in the habit of making colour
an important feature in most of his architectural designs. His principal
building is the church of St Vincent de Paul in the basilica style,
which was constructed between 1830 and 1844. He also designed the two
fountains in the Place de la Concorde, the Circus of the Empress, the
Rotunda of the panoramas, many cafes and restaurants of the Champs
Elysees, the houses forming the circle round the Arc de Triomphe de
l'Etoile, besides many embellishments of the Bois de Boulogne and other
places. In 1833 he was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. He
died in Paris on the 25th of March 1867.
HITZACKER, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover at the
influx of the Jeetze into the Elbe, 33 m. N.E. of Luneburg by the
railway to Wittenberge. Pop. (1905) 1106. It has an Evangelical church
and an old castle and numerous medieval remains. There are chalybeate
springs and a hydropathic establishment in the town. The famous library
now in Wolfenbuttel was originally founded here by Augustus, duke of
Brunswick (d. 1666) and was removed to its present habitation in 1643.
HITZIG, FERDINAND (1807-1875), German biblical critic, was born at
Hauingen, Baden, where his father was a pastor, on the 23rd of June
1807. He studied theology at Heidelberg under H. E. G. Paulus, at Halle
under Wilhelm Gesenius and at Gottingen under Ewald. Returning to
Heidelberg he became _Privatdozent_ in theology in 1829, and in 1831
published his _Begriff der Kritik am Alten Testamente praktisch
erortert_, a study of Old Testament criticism in which he explained the
critical principles of the grammatico-historical school, and his _Des
Propheten Jonas Orakel uber Moab_, an exposition of the 15th and 16th
chapters of the book of Isaiah attributed by him to the prophet Jonah
mentioned in 2 Kings xiv. 25. In 1833 he was called to the university of
Zurich as professor ordinarius of theology. His next work was a
commentary on Isaiah with a translation (_Ubersetzung u. Auslegung des
Propheten Jesajas_), which he dedicated to Heinrich Ewald, and which
Hermann Hupfeld (1796-1866), well known as a commentator on the Psalms
(1855-1861), pronounced to be his best exegetical work. At Zurich he
laboured for a period of twenty-eight years, during which, besides
commentaries on _The Psalms_ (1835-1836; 2nd ed., 1863-1865), _The Minor
Prophets_ (1838; 3rd ed., 1863), _Jeremiah_ (1841; 2nd ed., 1866),
_Ezekiel_ (1847), _Daniel_ (1850), _Ecclesiastes_ (1847), _Canticles_
(1855), and _Proverbs_ (1858), he published a monograph, _Uber Johannes
Markus u. seine Schriften_ (1843), in which he maintained the
chronological priority of the second gospel, and sought to prove that
the Apocalypse was written by the same author. He also published various
treatises of archaeological interest, of which the most important are
_Die Erfindung des Alphabets_ (1840), _Urgeschichte u. Mythologie der
Philistaer_ (1845), and _Die Grabschrift des Eschmunezar_(1855). After
the death of Friedrich Umbreit (1795-1860), one of the founders of the
well-known _Studien und Kritiken_, he was called in 1861 to succeed him
as professor of theology at Heidelberg. Here he wrote his _Geschichte
des Volkes Israel_ (1869-1870), in two parts, extending respectively to
the end of the Persian domination and to the fall of Masada, A.D. 72, as
well as a work on the Pauline epistles, _Zur Kritik Paulinischer Briefe_
(1870), on the Moabite Stone, _Die Inschrift des Mescha_ (1870), and on
Assyrian, _Sprache u. Sprachen Assyriens_ (1871), besides revising the
commentary on Job by Ludwig Hirzel (1801-1841), which was first
published in 1839. He was also a contributor to the _Monatsschrift des
wissenschaftlichen Vereins in Zurich_, the _Zeitschrift der deutschen
morgenlandischen Gesellschaft_, the _Theologische Studien u. Kritiken_,
Eduard Zeller's _Theologische Jahrbucher_, and Adolf Hilgenfeld's
_Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie_. Hitzig died at Heidelberg
on the 22nd of January 1875. As a Hebrew philologist he holds high rank;
and as a constructive critic he is remarkable for acuteness and
sagacity. As a historian, however, some of his speculations have been
considered fanciful. "He places the cradle of the Israelites in the
south of Arabia, and, like many other critics, makes the historical
times begin only with Moses" (F. Lichtenberger, _History of German
Theology_, p. 569).
His lectures on biblical theology (_Vorlesungen uber biblische
Theologie u. messianische Weissagungen_) were published in 1880 after
his death, along with a portrait and biographical sketch by his pupil,
J. J. Kneucker (b. 1840), professor of theology at Heidelberg. See
Heinrich Steiner, _Ferdinand Hitzig_ (1882); and Adolf Kamphausen's
article in Herzog-Hauck's _Realencyklopadie_.
HIUNG-NU, HIONG-NU, HEUNG-NU, a people who about the end of the 3rd
century B.C. formed, according to Chinese records, a powerful empire
from the Great Wall of China to the Caspian. Their ethnical affinities
have been much discussed; but it is most probable that they were of the
Turki stock, as were the Huns, their later western representatives. They
are the first Turkish people mentioned by the Chinese. A theory which
seems plausible is that which assumes them to have been a heterogenous
collection of Mongol, Tungus, Turki and perhaps even Finnish hordes
under a Mongol military caste, though the Mongolo-Tungus element
probably predominated. Towards the close of the 1st century of the
Christian era the Hiung-nu empire broke up. Their subsequent history is
obscure. Some of them seem to have gone westward and settled on the Ural
river. These, de Guiques suggests, were the ancestors of the Huns, and
many ethnologists hold that the Hiung-nu were the ancestors of the
modern Turks.
See _Journal Anthropological Institute_ for 1874; Sir H. H. Howorth,
_History of the Mongols_ (1876-1880); 6th Congress of Orientalists,
Leiden, 1883 (_Actes_, part iv. pp. 177-195); de Guiques, _Histoire
generale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mongoles, et des autres Tartares
occidentaux_ (1756-1758).
HIVITES, an ancient tribe of Palestine driven out by the invading
Israelites. In Josh. ix. 7, xi. 19 they are connected with Gibeon. The
meaning of the name is uncertain; Wellhausen derives it from [Hebrew:
Hava] "Eve," or "serpent," in which case the Hivites were originally the
snake clan; others explain it from the Arabic _hayy_, "family," as
meaning "dwellers in (Bedouin) encampments." (See PALESTINE; JEWS.)
HJORRING, an ancient town of Denmark, capital of the _amt_ (county) of
its name, in the northern insular part of the peninsula of Jutland. Pop.
(1901) 7901. It lies 7 m. inland from the shore of Jammer Bay, a stretch
of coast notoriously dangerous to shipping. On the coast is Lonstrup, a
favoured seaside resort. In this neighbourhood as well as to the
south-east of Hjorring, slight elevations are seen, deserving the name
of hills in this low-lying district. Hjorring is on the northern railway
of Jutland, which here turns eastward to the Cattegat part of
Frederikshavn (23 m.), a harbour of refuge.
HKAMTI LONG (called Kantigyi by the Burmese, and Bor Hkampti by the
peoples on the Assam side), a collection of seven Shan states
subordinate to Burma, but at present beyond the administrative border.
Estimated area, 900 sq. m.; estimated pop. 11,000. It lies between 27
deg. and 28 deg. N. and 97 deg. and 98 deg. E., and is bordered by the
Mishmi country on the N., by the Patkai range on the W., by the Hukawng
valley on the S. and E., and indeed all round by various Chingpaw or
Kachin communities. The country is little known. It was visited by T. T.
Cooper, the Chinese traveller and political agent at Bhamo, where he was
murdered; by General Woodthorpe and Colonel Macgregor in 1884, by Mr
Errol Grey in the following year, and by Prince Henry of Orleans in
1895. All of these, however, limited their explorations to the valley of
the Mali-hka, the western branch of the Irrawaddy river. Hkamti has
shrunk very much from its old size. It was no doubt the northernmost
province of the Shan kingdom, founded at Mogaung by Sam Long-hpa, the
brother of the ruler of Kambawsa, when that empire had reached its
greatest extension. The irruption of Kachins or Chingpaw from the north
has now completely hemmed the state in. Prince Henry of Orleans
described it as "a splendid territory, fertile in soil and abundant in
water, where tropical and temperate culture flourish side by side, and
the inhabitants are protected on three fronts by mountains." According
to him the Kiutze, the people of the hills between the Irrawaddy and the
Salween, call it the kingdom of Moam.
HLOTHHERE, king of Kent, succeeded his brother Ecgberht in 673, and
appears for a time to have reigned jointly with his nephew Eadric, son
of Ecgberht, as a code of laws still extant was issued under both names.
Neither is mentioned in the account of the invasion of Aethelred in 676.
In 685 Eadric, who seems to have quarrelled with Hlothhere, went into
exile and led the South Saxons against him. Hlothhere was defeated and
died of his wounds.
See Bede, _Hist. eccl._ (Plummer), iv. 5, 17, 26, v. 24; _Saxon
Chronicle_ (Earle and Plummer), s.a. 685; Schmid, _Gesetze_, pp. 10
sqq.; Thorpe, _Ancient Laws_, i. 26 sqq.
HOACTZIN, or HOATZIN, a bird of tropical South America, thought by
Buffon to be that indicated by Hernandez or Fernandez under these names,
the _Opisthocomus hoazin_ or _O. cristatus_ of modern ornithologists--a
very curious and remarkable form, which has long exercised the ingenuity
of classifiers. Placed by Buffon among his "_Hoccos_" (Curassows), and
then by P. L. S. Muller and J. F. Gmelin in the Linnaean genus
_Phasianus_, some of its many peculiarities were recognized by J. K. W.
Illiger in 1811 as sufficient to establish it as a distinct genus,
_Opisthocomus_; but various positions were assigned to it by subsequent
systematic authors. L'Herminier was the first to give any account of its
anatomy (_Comptes rendus_, 1837, v. 433), and from his time our
knowledge of it has been successively increased by Johannes Muller
(_Ber. Akad. Wissensch. Berlin_, 1841, p. 177), Deville (_Rev. et mag.
de zoologie_, 1852, p. 217), Gervais (Castelnau, _Exped. Amerique du
Sud, zoologie, anatomie_, p. 66), Huxley (_Proc. Zool. Society_, 1868,
p. 304), Perrin (_Trans. Zool. Society_, ix. p. 353), and A. H. Garrod
(_Proc. Zool. Society_, 1879, p. 109). After a minute description of the
skeleton of _Opisthocomus_, with the especial object of determining its
affinities, Huxley declared that it "resembles the ordinary gallinaceous
birds and pigeons more than it does any others, and that when it
diverges from them it is either sui generis or approaches the
_Musophagidae_." He accordingly regarded it as the type and sole member
of a group, named by him _Heteromorphae_, which sprang from the great
Carinate stem later than the _Tinamomorphae_, _Turnicomorphae_, or
_Charadriomorphae_, but before the _Peristeromorphae_, _Pteroclomorphae_
or _Alectoromorphae_. This conclusion is substantially the same as that
at which A. H. Garrod subsequently arrived after closely examining and
dissecting specimens preserved in spirit; but the latter has gone
further and endeavoured to trace more particularly the descent of this
peculiar form and some others, remarking that the ancestor of
_Opisthocomus_ must have left the parent stem very shortly before the
true _Gallinae_ first appeared, and at about the same time as the
independent pedigree of the _Cuculidae_ and _Musophagidae_
commenced--these two groups being, he believed, very closely related,
and _Opisthocomus_ serving to fill the gap between them.
The first thing that strikes the observer of its skeleton is the
extraordinary structure of the sternal apparatus, which is wholly unlike
that of any other bird known. The keel is only developed on the
posterior part of the sternum--the fore part being, as it were, cut
away, while the short furcula at its symphysis meets the manubrium, with
which it is firmly consolidated by means of a prolonged and straight
hypocleidium, and anteriorly ossifies with the coracoids. This unique
arrangement seems to be correlated with the enormously capacious crop,
which rests upon the furcula and fore part of the sternum, and is also
received in a cavity formed on the surface of each of the great pectoral
muscles. Furthermore this crop is extremely muscular, so as more to
resemble a gizzard, and consists of two portions divided by a partial
constriction, after a fashion of which no other example is known among
birds. The true gizzard is greatly reduced.
[Illustration: Hoactzin.]
The hoactzin appears to be about the size of a small pheasant, but is
really a much smaller bird. The beak is strong, curiously denticulated
along the margin of the maxilla near the base, and is beset by diverging
bristles. The eyes, placed in the middle of a patch of bare skin, are
furnished with bristly lashes, resembling those of horn-bills and some
few other birds. The head bears a long pendant crest of loose yellowish
feathers. The body is olive-coloured, varied with white above, and
beneath is of a dull bay. The wings are short and rounded. The tail is
long and tipped with yellow. The legs are rather short, the feet stout,
the tarsi reticulated, and the toes scutellated; the claws long and
slightly curved. According to all who have observed the habits of this
bird, it lives in bands on the lower trees and bushes bordering the
streams and lagoons, feeding on leaves and various wild fruits,
especially, says H. W. Bates (_Naturalist on the River Amazons_, i. 120),
those of a species of _Psidium_, and it is also credited with eating
those of an arum (_Caladium arborescens_), which grows plentifully in its
haunts. "Its voice is a harsh, grating hiss," continues the same
traveller, and "it makes the noise when alarmed, all the individuals
sibilating as they fly heavily away from tree to tree, when disturbed by
passing canoes." It exhales a very strong odour--wherefore it is known in
British Guiana as the "stink-bird"--compared by Bates to "musk combined
with wet hides," and by Deville to that of a cow-house. The species is
said to be polygamous; the nest is built on trees, of sticks placed above
one another, and softer materials atop. Therein the hen lays her eggs to
the number of three or four, of a dull-yellowish white, somewhat
profusely marked with reddish blotches and spots, so as to resemble those
of some of the _Rallidae_ (_Proc. Zool. Society_, 1867, pl. xv. fig. 7.
p. 164). The young are covered only with very scanty hair, like down, and
have well-developed claws on the first and second fingers of the wing,
which they use in clambering about the twigs in a quadrupedal manner; if
placed in the water they swim and dive well, although the adults seem to
be not at all aquatic. (A. N.)
HOADLY, BENJAMIN (1676-1761), English divine, was born at Westerham,
Kent, on the 14th of November 1676. In 1691 he entered Catharine Hall,
Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. and was for two years tutor, after
which he held from 1701 to 1711 the lectureship of St Mildred in the
Poultry, and along with it from 1704 the rectory of St Peter-le-Poer,
London. His first important appearance as a controversialist was against
Edmund Calamy "the younger" in reference to conformity (1703-1707), and
after this he came into conflict with Francis Atterbury, first on the
interpretation of certain texts and then on the whole Anglican doctrine
of non-resistance. His principal treatises on this subject were the
_Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate_ and _The Origin and
Institution of Civil Government discussed_; and his part in the
discussion was so much appreciated by the Commons that in 1709 they
presented an address to the queen praying her to "bestow some dignity in
the church on Mr Hoadly for his eminent services both to church and
state." The queen returned a favourable answer, but the dignity was not
conferred. In 1710 he was presented by a private patron to the rectory
of Streatham in Surrey. In 1715 he was appointed chaplain to the king,
and the same year he obtained the bishopric of Bangor. He held the see
for six years, but never visited the diocese. In 1716, in reply to
George Hickes (q.v.), he published a _Preservative against the
Principles and Practices of Nonjurors in Church and State_, and in the
following year preached before the king his famous sermon on the
_Kingdom of Christ_, which was immediately published by royal command.
These works were attacks on the divine authority of kings and of the
clergy, but as the sermon dealt more specifically and distinctly with
the power of the church, its publication caused an ecclesiastical
ferment which in certain aspects has no parallel in religious history.
It was at once resolved to proceed against him in convocation, but this
was prevented by the king proroguing the assembly, a step which had
consequences of vital bearing on the history of the Church of England,
since from that period the great Anglican council ceased to transact
business of a more than formal nature. The restrained sentiments of the
council in regard to Hoadly found expression in a war of pamphlets known
as the Bangorian Controversy, which, partly from a want of clearness in
the statements of Hoadly, partly from the disingenuousness of his
opponents and the confusion resulting from exasperated feelings,
developed into an intricate and bewildering maze of side discussions in
which the main issues of the dispute were concealed almost beyond the
possibility of discovery. But however vague and uncertain might be the
meaning of Hoadly in regard to several of the important bearings of the
questions around which he aroused discussion, he was explicit in denying
the power of the Church over the conscience, and its right to determine
the condition of men in relation to the favour of God. The most able of
his opponents was William Law; others were Andrew Snape, provost of
Eton, and Thomas Sherlock, dean of Chichester. So exercised was the mind
of the religious world over the dispute that in July 1717 as many as
seventy-four pamphlets made their appearance; and at one period the
crisis became so serious that the business of London was for some days
virtually at a stand-still. Hoadly, being not unskilled in the art of
flattery, was translated in 1721 to the see of Hereford, in 1723 to
Salisbury and in 1734 to Winchester. He died at his palace at Chelsea on
the 17th of April 1761. His controversial writings are vigorous if
prolix and his theological essays have little merit. He must have been a
much hated man, for his latitudinarianism offended the high church party
and his rationalism the other sections. He was an intimate friend of Dr
Samuel Clarke, of whom he wrote a life.
Hoadly's brother, JOHN HOADLY (1678-1746), was archbishop of Dublin from
1730 to 1742 and archbishop of Armagh from the latter date until his
death on the 19th of July 1746. In early life the archbishop was very
intimate with Gilbert Burnet, then bishop of Salisbury, and in later
life he was a prominent figure in Irish politics.
The works of Benjamin Hoadly were collected and published by his son
John in 3 vols. (1773). To the first volume was prefixed the article
"Hoadly" from the supplement to the _Biographia Britannica_. See also
L. Stephen, _English Thought in the 18th Century_.
HOAR, SAMUEL (1778--1856), American lawyer, was born in Lincoln,
Massachusetts, on the 18th of May 1778. He was the son of Samuel Hoar,
an officer in the American army during the War of Independence, for many
years a member of the Massachusetts General Court, and a member in
1820-1821 of the state Constitutional Convention. The son graduated at
Harvard in 1802, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1805 and began
practice at Concord. His success in his profession was immediate, and
for a half-century he was one of the leading lawyers of Massachusetts.
He was in early life a Federalist and was later an ardent Whig in
politics. He was a member of the state senate in 1825, 1832 and 1833,
and of the national house of representatives in 1835-1837, during which
time he made a notable speech in favour of the constitutional right of
congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. In November
1844, having retired from active legal practice some years before, he
went to Charleston, S.C., at the request of Governor George Nixon Briggs
(1796-1861), to test in the courts of South Carolina the
constitutionality of the state law which provided that "it shall not be
lawful for any free negro, or person of color, to come into this state
on board any vessel, as a cook, steward or mariner, or in any other
employment," and that such free negroes should be seized and locked up
until the vessels on which they had come were ready for sea, when they
should be returned to such vessels. His visit aroused great excitment,
he was threatened with personal injury, the state legislature passed
resolutions calling for his expulsion, and he was compelled to leave
early in December. In 1848 he was prominent in the Free Soil movement in
Massachusetts, and subsequently assisted in the organization of the
Republican Party. In 1850 he served in the Massachusetts house of
representatives. He married a daughter of Roger Sherman of Connecticut.
He died at Concord, Massachusetts, on the 2nd of November 1856.
See a memoir by his son G. F. Hoar in _Memorial Biographies of the New
England Historic Genealogical Society_, vol. iii. (Boston, 1883); the
estimate by R. W. Emerson in _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_
(Boston, 1903); and "Samuel Hoar's Expulsion from Charleston," _Old
South Leaflets_, vol. vi. No. 140.
His son, EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR (1816-1895), was born at Concord,
Massachusetts, on the 21st of February 1816. He graduated at Harvard in
1835 and at the Harvard Law School in 1839, and was admitted to the
Massachusetts bar in 1840. From 1849 to 1855 he was a judge of the
Massachusetts court of common pleas, from 1859 to 1869 a judge of the
state supreme court, and in 1869-1870 attorney-general of the United
States in the cabinet of President Grant, and in that position fought
unmerited "machine" appointments to offices in the civil service until
at the pressure of the "machine" Grant asked for his resignation from
the cabinet. The Senate had already shown its disapproval of Hoar's
policy of civil service reform by its failure in 1870 to confirm the
President's nomination of Hoar as associate-justice of the supreme
court. In 1871 he was a member of the Joint High Commission which drew
up the Treaty of Washington. In 1872 he was a presidential elector on
the Republican ticket, and in 1873-1875 was a representative in
Congress. He was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard
University from 1868 to 1880 and from 1881 to 1887, and was president of
the Board in 1878-1880 and in 1881-1887. He was also prominent in the
affairs of the Unitarian church. He was a man of high character and
brilliant wit. He died at Concord on the 31st of January 1895.
Another son, GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR (1826-1904), was born in Concord,
Massachusetts, on the 29th of August 1826. He graduated at Harvard in
1846 and at the Harvard Law School in 1849. He settled in the practice
of law in Worcester, Massachusetts, where in 1852 he became a partner of
Emory Washburn (1800-1877). In 1852 he was elected as a Free-Soiler to
the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and during his single term
of service became the leader of his party in that body. He was active in
the organization of the Republican party in Massachusetts, and in 1857
was elected to the State senate, but declined a re-election. During
1856-1857 he was active in behalf of the Free-State cause in Kansas. He
was a member of the National House of Representatives from 1869 until
1877, and in this body took high rank as a ready debater and a
conscientious committee worker. He was prominent as a defender and
supporter of the Freedman's Bureau, took a leading part in the later
reconstruction legislation and in the investigation of the Credit
Mobilier scandal, and in 1876 was one of the House managers of the
impeachment of General W. W. Belknap, Grant's secretary of war. In 1877
he was a member of the Electoral Commission which settled the disputed
Hayes-Tilden election. From 1877 until his death he was a member of the
United States senate. In the senate almost from the start he took rank
as one of the most influential leaders of the Republican party; he was a
member from 1882 until his death of the important Judiciary Committee,
of which he was chairman in 1891-1893 and in 1895-1904. His most
important piece of legislation was the Presidential Succession Act of
1886. He was a delegate to every Republican National Convention from
1876 to 1904, and presided over that at Chicago in 1880. He was a
conservative by birth and training, and although he did not leave his
party he disagreed with its policy in regard to the Philippines, and
spoke and voted against the ratification of the Spanish Treaty. He was
regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1880-1881, and long served as
an overseer of Harvard University (1896-1904) and as president of its
alumni association. He was also president of the American Historical
Association (1894-1895) and of the American Antiquarian Society
(1884-1887). Like his brother, he was a leading Unitarian, and was
president of its National Conference from 1894 to 1902. He died at
Worcester, Massachusetts, on the 30th of September 1904. A memorial
statue has been erected there.
See his _Recollections of Seventy Years_ (New York, 1903).
HOARE, SIR RICHARD COLT, BART. (1758-1838), English antiquary, was the
eldest son of Richard Hoare, who was created a baronet in 1786, and was
born on the 9th of December 1758. He was descended from Sir Richard
Hoare (1648-1718), lord mayor of London, the founder of the family
banking business. An ample allowance from his grandfather, Henry Hoare,
enabled him to pursue the archaeological studies for which he had
already shown an inclination. In 1783 he married Hester, daughter of
William Henry, Lord Lyttelton, and after her death in 1785 he paid a
prolonged visit to France, Italy and Switzerland. He succeeded to the
baronetcy in 1787, and in 1788 made a second continental tour, the
record of his travels appearing in 1819 under the title _A Classical
Tour through Italy and Sicily_. A journey through Wales was followed by
a translation of the _Itinerarium Cambriae_ and of the _Descriptio
Cambriae of_ Giraldus Cambrensis, Hoare adding notes and a life of
Giraldus to the translation. This was first published in 1804, and has
been revised by T. Wright (London, 1863). Sir Richard died at Stourhead,
Wiltshire, on the 19th of May 1838, being succeeded in the baronetcy by
his half-brother, Henry Hugh Hoare. Hoare's most important work was his
_Ancient History of North and South Wiltshire_ (1812-1819); he also did
some work on the large _History of Modern Wiltshire_ (1822-1844).
For notices of him and a list of his works, many of which were printed
privately, see the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for July 1838, and the
_Dict. Nat. Biog._ vol. xxvii. (1891). See also E. Hoare, _History of
the Hoare Family_ (1883).
HOBART, GARRET AUGUSTUS (1844-1899), Vice-President of the United States
1897-1899, was born at Long Branch, N.J., on the 3rd of June 1844. He
graduated at Rutgers College in 1863, was admitted to the bar in 1869,
practised law at Paterson, N.J., and rose to prominence in the State. He
was long conspicuous in the State Republican organization, was chairman
of the New Jersey State Republican Committee from 1880 to 1890, became a
member in 1884 of the Republican National Committee, and was the
delegate-at-large from New Jersey to five successive Republican national
nominating conventions. He served in the New Jersey Assembly in
1873-1874, and in the New Jersey Senate in 1877-1882, and was speaker of
the Assembly in 1874 and president of the Senate in 1881 and 1882. He
was also prominent and successful in business and accumulated a large
fortune. He accepted the nomination as Vice-President in 1896, on the
ticket with President McKinley, and was elected; but while still in
office he died at Paterson, N.J., on the 21st of November 1899.
See the _Life_ (New York, 1910) by David Magie.
HOBART, JOHN HENRY (1775-1830), American Protestant Episcopal bishop,
was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 14th of September 1775,
being fifth in direct descent from Edmund Hobart, a founder of Hingham,
Massachusetts. He was educated at the Philadelphia Latin School, the
College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), and
Princeton, where he graduated in 1793. After studying theology under
Bishop William White at Philadelphia, he was ordained deacon in 1798,
and priest two years later. He was elected assistant bishop of New York,
with the right of succession, in 1811, and was acting diocesan from that
date because of the ill-health of Bishop Benjamin Moore, whom he
formally succeeded on the latter's death in February 1816. He was one of
the founders of the General Theological Seminary, became its professor
of pastoral theology in 1821, and as bishop was its governor. In his
zeal for the historic episcopacy he published in 1807 _An Apology for
Apostolic Order and its Advocates_, a series of letters to Rev. John M.
Mason, who, in _The Christian's Magazine_, of which he was editor, had
attacked the Episcopacy in general and in particular Hobart's
_Collection of Essays on the Subject of Episcopacy_ (1806). Hobart's
zeal for the General Seminary and the General Convention led him to
oppose the plan of Philander Chase, bishop of Ohio, for an Episcopal
seminary in that diocese; but the Ohio seminary was made directly
responsible to the House of Bishops, and Hobart approved the plan. His
strong opposition to "dissenting churches" was nowhere so clearly shown
as in a pamphlet published in 1816 to dissuade all Episcopalians from
joining the American Bible Society, which he thought the Protestant
Episcopal Church had not the numerical or the financial strength to
control. In 1818, to counterbalance the influence of the Bible Society
and especially of Scott's _Commentaries_, he began to edit with selected
notes the _Family Bible_ of the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge. He delivered episcopal charges to the clergy of Connecticut
and New York entitled _The Churchman_ (1819) and _The High Churchman
Vindicated_ (1826), in which he accepted the name "high churchman," and
stated and explained his principles "in distinction from the corruptions
of the Church of Rome and from the Errors of Certain Protestant Sects."
He exerted himself greatly in building up his diocese, attempting to
make an annual visit to every parish. His failing health led him to
visit Europe in 1823-1825. Upon his return he preached a characteristic
sermon entitled _The United States of America compared with some
European Countries, particularly England_ (published 1826), in which,
although there was some praise for the English church, he so boldly
criticized the establishment, state patronage, cabinet appointment of
bishops, lax discipline, and the low requirements of theological
education, as to rouse much hostility in England, where he had been
highly praised for two volumes of _Sermons on the Principal Events and
Truths of Redemption_ (1824). He died at Auburn, New York, on the 12th
of September 1830. He was able, impetuous, frank, perfectly fearless in
controversy, a speaker and preacher of much eloquence, a supporter of
missions to the Oneida Indians in his diocese, and the compiler of the
following devotional works: _A Companion for the Altar_ (1804),
_Festivals and Fasts_ (1804), _A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer_
(1805), and _A Clergyman's Companion_ (1805).
See _Memorial of Bishop Hobart_, containing a _Memoir_ (New York,
1831); John McVickar, _The Early Life and Professional Years of Bishop
Hobart_ (New York, 1834), and _The Closing Years of Bishop Hobart_
(New York, 1836).
HOBART PASHA, AUGUSTUS CHARLES HOBART-HAMPDEN (1822-1886), English naval
captain and Turkish admiral, was born in Leicestershire on the 1st of
April 1822, being the third son of the 6th Earl of Buckinghamshire. In
1835 he entered the Royal Navy and served as a midshipman on the coast
of Brazil in the suppression of the slave trade, displaying much
gallantry in the operations. In 1855 he took part, as captain of the
"Driver," in the Baltic Expedition, and was actively engaged at
Bomarsund and Abo. In 1862 he retired from the navy with the rank of
post-captain; but his love of adventure led him, during the American
Civil War, to take the command of a blockade-runner. He had the good
fortune to run the blockade eighteen times, conveying war material to
Charleston and returning with a cargo of cotton. In 1867 Hobart entered
the Turkish service, and was immediately nominated to the command of
that fleet, with the rank of "Bahrie Limassi" (rear-admiral). In this
capacity he performed splendid service in helping to suppress the
insurrection in Crete, and was rewarded by the Sultan with the title of
Pasha (1869). In 1874 Hobart, whose name had, on representations made by
Greece, been removed from the British Navy List, was reinstated; his
restoration did not, however, last long, for on the outbreak of the
Russo-Turkish war he again entered Turkish service. In command of the
Turkish squadron he completely dominated the Black Sea, blockading the
ports of South Russia and the mouths of the Danube, and paralysing the
action of the Russian fleet. On the conclusion of peace Hobart still
remained in the Turkish service, and in 1881 was appointed Mushir, or
marshal, being the first Christian to hold that high office. His
achievements as a blockade-runner, his blockade of Crete, and his
handling of the Turkish fleet against the torpedo-lined coasts of
Russia, showed him to be a daring, resourceful, and skilful commander,
worthy to be ranked among the illustrious names of British naval heroes.
He died at Milan on the 19th of June 1886.
See his _Sketches of My Life_ (1886), which must, however, be used
with caution, since it contains many proved inaccuracies.
HOBART, the capital of Tasmania, in the county of Buckingham, on the
southern coast of the island. It occupies a site of great beauty,
standing on a series of low hills at the foot of Mount Wellington, a
lofty peak (4166 ft.) which is snow-clad for many months in the year.
The town fronts Sullivan's Cove, a picturesque bay opening into the
estuary of the river Derwent, and is nearly square in form, laid out
with wide streets intersecting at right angles, the chief of which are
served by electric tramways. It is the seat of the Anglican bishop of
Tasmania, and of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Hobart. The Anglican
cathedral of St David dates from 1873, though its foundations were laid
as early as 1817. St Mary's Roman Catholic cathedral is a beautiful
building; but perhaps the most notable ecclesiastical building in Hobart
is the great Baptist tabernacle in Upper Elizabeth Street. The most
prominent public buildings are the Houses of Parliament, to which an
excellent library is attached; the town hall, a beautiful building of
brown and white Tasmanian freestone in Italian style; the museum and
national art gallery, and the general post office (1904) with its lofty
clock-tower. Government House, the residence of the governor of
Tasmania, a handsome castellated building, stands in its domain on the
banks of the Derwent, to the north of the town. The botanical gardens
adjoin. Of the parks and public gardens, the most extensive is the
Queen's Domain, covering an area of about 700 acres, while the most
central is Franklin Square, adorned with a statue of Sir John Franklin,
the famous Arctic explorer, who was governor of Tasmania from 1837 to
1843. The university of Tasmania, established in 1890, and opened in
1893, has its headquarters at Hobart. The town is celebrated for its
invigorating climate, and its annual regatta on the Derwent attracts
numerous visitors. The harbour is easy of access, well sheltered and
deep, with wharf accommodation for vessels of the largest tonnage. It is
a regular port of call for several intercolonial lines from Sydney and
Melbourne, and for lines from London to New Zealand. The exports, of an
average value of L850,000 annually, consist mainly of fruit, hops,
grain, timber and wool. The industries comprise brewing, saw-milling,
iron-founding, flour-milling, tanning, and the manufacture of pottery
and woollen goods. Hobart is the centre of a large fruit-growing
district, the produce of which, for the most part, is exported to London
and Sydney. The city was founded in 1804 and takes its name from Lord
Hobart (see BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, EARLS OF), then secretary of state for the
colonies. It was created a municipality in 1853, and a city in 1857; and
in 1881 its name was changed from Hobart Town to the present form. The
chief suburbs are Newton, Sandy Bay, Wellington, Risdon, Glenorchy,
Bellerive and Beltana. The population of the city proper in 1901 was
24,652, or including suburbs, 34,182.
HOBBEMA, MEYNDERT (c. 1638-1709), the greatest landscape painter of the
Dutch school after Ruysdael, lived at Amsterdam in the second half of
the 17th century. The facts of his life are somewhat obscure. Nothing is
more disappointing than to find that in Hobbema's case chronology and
signed pictures substantially contradict each other. According to the
latter his practice lasted from 1650 to 1689; according to the former
his birth occurred in 1638, his death as late as 1709. If the
masterpiece formerly in the Bredel collection, called "A Wooded Stream,"
honestly bears the date of 1650, or "The Cottages under Trees" of the
Ford collection the date of 1652, the painter of these canvases cannot
be Hobbema, whose birth took place in 1638, unless indeed we admit that
Hobbema painted some of his finest works at the age of twelve or
fourteen. For a considerable period it was profitable to pass Hobbemas
as Ruysdaels, and the name of the lesser master was probably erased from
several of his productions. When Hobbema's talent was recognized, the
contrary process was followed, and in this way the name, and perhaps
fictitious dates, reappeared by fraud. An experienced eye will note the
differences which occur in Hobbema's signatures in such well-known
examples as adorn the galleries of London and Rotterdam, or the
Grosvenor and van der Hoop collections. Meanwhile, we must be content to
know that, if the question of dates could be brought into accordance
with records and chronology, the facts of Hobbema's life would be as
follows.
Meyndert Hobbema was married at the age of thirty to Eeltije Vinck of
Gorcum, in the Oudekerk or old church at Amsterdam, on the 2nd of
November 1668. Witnesses to the marriage were the bride's brother
Cornelius Vinck and Jacob Ruysdael. We might suppose from this that
Hobbema and Ruysdael, the two great masters of landscape, were united at
this time by ties of friendship, and accept the belief that the former
was the pupil of the latter. Yet even this is denied to us, since
records tell us that there were two Jacob Ruysdaels, cousins and
contemporaries, at Amsterdam in the middle of the 17th century--one a
framemaker, the son of Solomon, the other a painter, the son of Isaac
Ruysdael. Of Hobbema's marriage there came between 1668 and 1673 four
children. In 1704 Eeltije died, and was buried in the pauper section of
the Leiden cemetery at Amsterdam. Hobbema himself survived till December
1709, receiving burial on the 14th of that month in the pauper section
of the Westerkerk cemetery at Amsterdam. Husband and wife had lived
during their lifetime in the Rozengracht, at no great distance from
Rembrandt, who also dwelt there in his later and impoverished days.
Rembrandt, Hals, Jacob Ruysdael, and Hobbema were in one respect alike.
They all died in misery, insufficiently rewarded perhaps for their toil,
imprudent perhaps in the use of the means derived from their labours.
Posterity has recognized that Hobbema and Ruysdael together represent
the final development of landscape art in Holland. Their style is so
related that we cannot suppose the first to have been unconnected with
the second. Still their works differ in certain ways, and their
character is generally so marked that we shall find little difficulty in
distinguishing them, nor indeed shall we hesitate in separating those of
Hobbema from the feebler productions of his imitators and
predecessors--Isaac Ruysdael, Rontbouts, de Vries, Dekker, Looten,
Verboom, du Bois, van Kessel, van der Hagen, even Philip de Koningk. In
the exercise of his craft Hobbema was patient beyond all conception. It
is doubtful whether any one ever so completely mastered as he did the
still life of woods and hedges, or mills and pools. Nor can we believe
that he obtained this mastery otherwise than by constantly dwelling in
the same neighbourhood, say in Guelders or on the Dutch Westphalian
border, where day after day he might study the branching and foliage of
trees and underwood embowering cottages and mills, under every variety
of light, in every shade of transparency, in all changes produced by the
seasons. Though his landscapes are severely and moderately toned,
generally in an olive key, and often attuned to a puritanical grey or
russet, they surprise us, not only by the variety of their leafage, but
by the finish of their detail as well as the boldness of their touch.
With astonishing subtlety light is shown penetrating cloud, and
illuminating, sometimes transiently, sometimes steadily, different
portions of the ground, shining through leaves upon other leaves, and
multiplying in an endless way the transparency of the picture. If the
chance be given him he mirrors all these things in the still pool near a
cottage, the reaches of a sluggish river, or the swirl of the stream
that feeds a busy mill. The same spot will furnish him with several
pictures. One mill gives him repeated opportunities of charming our eye;
and this wonderful artist, who is only second to Ruysdael because he had
not Ruysdael's versatility and did not extend his study equally to downs
and rocky eminences, or torrents and estuaries--this is the man who
lived penuriously, died poor, and left no trace in the artistic annals
of his country! It has been said that Hobbema did not paint his own
figures, but transferred that duty to Adrian van de Velde, Lingelbach,
Barendt Gael, and Abraham Storck. As to this much is conjecture.
The best of Hobbema's dated pictures are those of the years 1663 to
1667. Of the former, several in the galleries of Brussels and St
Petersburg, and one in the Holford collection, are celebrated. Of 1665
fine specimens are at Grosvenor House and the Wallace collection. Of
seven pieces in the National Gallery, including the "Avenue at
Middelharnis," which some assign to 1689, and the "Ruins of Breberode
Castle," two are dated 1667. A sample of the last of these years is
also in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. Amongst the masterpieces
in private hands in England may be noticed two landscapes in
Buckingham Palace, two at Bridgewater House, and one belonging to Mr
Walter of Bearwood. On the continent are a "Wooded Landscape" in the
Berlin gallery, a "Forest" belonging to the duchess of Sagan in Paris,
and a "Glade" in the Louvre. There are other fine Hobbemas in the
Antwerp Museum, the Arenberg gallery at Brussels, and the Belvedere at
Vienna. (J. A. C.)
HOBBES, THOMAS (1588-1679), English philosopher, second son of Thomas
Hobbes, was born at Westport (now part of Malmesbury, Wiltshire) on the
5th of April 1588. His father, vicar of Charlton and Westport, an
illiterate and choleric man, quarrelled, it is said, with a brother
clergyman at the church door, and was forced to decamp, leaving his
three children to the care of an elder brother Francis, a flourishing
glover at Malmesbury. Thomas Hobbes was put to school at Westport church
at the age of four, passed to the Malmesbury school at eight, and was
taught again in Westport later at a private school kept by a young man
named Robert Latimer, fresh from Oxford and "a good Grecian." He had
begun Latin and Greek early, and under Latimer made such progress as to
be able to translate the _Medea_ of Euripides into Latin iambic verse
before he was fourteen. About the age of fifteen he was sent to Oxford
and entered at Magdalen Hall. During his residence, the first principal
of Magdalen Hall, John Hussee, was succeeded by John Wilkinson, who
ruled in the interest of the Calvinistic party in the university. Thus
early was he brought into contact with the aggressive Puritan spirit.
Apart from this, Hobbes owed little to his university training, which
was based on the scholastic logic then prevalent. We have from himself a
lively record of his student life (_Vit. carm. exp._ p. lxxxv.), which,
though penned in extreme old age, may be taken as trustworthy. He tells
how, when he had slowly taken in the doctrine of logical figures and
moods, he put it aside and would prove things only in his own way; how
he then heard about bodies as consisting of matter and form, as throwing
off species of themselves for perception, and as moved by sympathies and
antipathies, with much else of a like sort, all beyond his
comprehension; and how he therefore turned to his old books again, fed
his mind on maps and charts of earth and sky, traced the sun in his
path, followed Drake and Cavendish girdling the main, and gazed with
delight upon pictured haunts of men and wonders of unknown lands. Very
characteristic is the interest in men and things, and the disposition to
cut through questions in the schools after a trenchant fashion of his
own. He was little attracted by the scholastic learning, though it would
be wrong to take his words as evidence of a precocious insight into its
weakness. The truth probably is that he took no interest in studies
which there was no risk in neglecting, and thought as little of
rejecting as of accepting the traditional doctrines. He adds that he
took his degree at the proper time; but in fact, upon any computation
and from whatever cause, he remained at Magdalen Hall five, instead of
the required four, years, not being admitted as bachelor till the 5th of
February 1608.
Translation of Thucydides.
In the same year Hobbes was recommended by Wilkinson as tutor to the son
of William Cavendish, baron of Hardwick (afterwards 2nd earl of
Devonshire), and thus began a lifelong connexion with a great and
powerful family. Twice it was loosened--once, for a short time, after
twenty years, and again, for a longer period, during the Civil War--but
it never was broken. Hobbes spoke of the first years of his tutorship as
the happiest of his life. Young Cavendish was hardly younger than
Hobbes, and had been married, a few months before, at the instance of
the king, to Christiana, the only daughter of Edward, Lord Bruce of
Kinloss, though by reason of the bride's age, which was only twelve
years, the pair had no establishment for some time. Hobbes was his
companion rather than tutor (before becoming secretary); and, growing
greatly attached to each other, they were sent abroad together on the
grand tour in 1610. During this journey, the duration of which cannot be
precisely stated, Hobbes acquired some knowledge of French and Italian,
and also made the important discovery that the scholastic philosophy
which he had learned in Oxford was almost universally neglected in
favour of the scientific and critical methods of Galileo, Kepler and
Montaigne. Unable at first to cope with their unfamiliar ideas, he
determined to become a scholar, and until 1628 was engaged in a careful
study of Greek and Latin authors, the outcome of which was his great
translation of Thucydides. But when he had finished his work he kept it
lying by him for years, being no longer so sure of finding appreciative
readers; and when he did send it forth, in 1628, he was fain to be
content with "the few and better sort."[1] That he was finally
determined to publication by the political troubles of the year 1628 may
be regarded as certain, not only from his own express declaration at a
later time (_Vit. carm. exp._), but also from unmistakable hints in the
account of the life and work of his author prefixed to the translation
on its appearance. This was the year of the Petition of Right, extorted
from the king in the third parliament he had tried within three years of
his accession; and, in view of Hobbes's later activity, it is
significant that he came forward just then, at the mature age of forty,
with his version of the story of the Athenian democracy as the first
production of his pen. Nothing else is known of his doings before 1628,
except that through his connexion with young Cavendish he had relations
with literary men of note like Ben Jonson, and also with Bacon and Lord
Herbert of Cherbury. If he never had any sympathy with Herbert's
intuitionalist principles in philosophy, he was no less eager, as he
afterwards showed, than Herbert to rationalize in matters of religious
doctrine, so that he may be called the second of the English deists, as
Herbert has been called the first. With Bacon he was so intimate
(Aubrey's _Lives_, pp. 222, 602) that some writers have described him as
a disciple. The facts that he used to walk with Bacon at Gorhambury, and
would jot down with exceptional intelligence the eager thinker's sudden
"notions," and that he was employed to make the Latin version of some of
the _Essays_, prove nothing when weighed against his own disregard of
all Bacon's principles, and the other evidence that the impulse to
independent thinking came to him not from Bacon, and not till some time
after Bacon's death in 1626.[2]
Philosophic Inquiry.
So far as we have any positive evidence, it was not before the year 1629
that Hobbes entered on philosophical inquiry. Meanwhile a great change
had been wrought in his circumstances. His friend and master, after
about two years' tenure of the earldom of Devonshire, died of the plague
in June 1628, and the affairs of the family were so disordered
financially that the widowed countess was left with the task of righting
them in the boyhood of the third earl. Hobbes went on for a time living
in the household; but his services were no longer in demand, and,
remaining inconsolable under his personal bereavement, he sought
distraction, in 1629, in another engagement which took him abroad as
tutor to the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, of an old Nottinghamshire
family. This, his second, sojourn abroad appears to have been spent
chiefly in Paris, and the one important fact recorded of it is that he
then first began to look into Euclid. The engagement came to an end in
1631, when he was recalled to train the young earl of Devonshire, now
thirteen years old, son of his previous pupil. In the course of the next
seven years in Derbyshire and abroad, Hobbes took his pupil over
rhetoric,[3] logic, astronomy, and the principles of law, with other
subjects. His mind was now full of the thought of motion in nature, and
on the continent he sought out the philosophical speculators or
scientific workers. In Florence in 1636 he saw Galileo, for whom he ever
retained the warmest admiration, and spent eight months in daily
converse with the members of a scientific circle in Paris, held together
by Marin Mersenne (q.v.). From that time (the winter of 1636-1637) he
too, as he tells us, was numbered among philosophers.
His introduction to Euclid took place accidentally in 1629 (Aubrey's
_Lives_, p. 604). Euclid's manner of proof became the model for his
own way of thinking upon all subjects. It is less easy to determine
when he awoke to an interest in the physical doctrine of motion. The
story told by himself (_Vit._ p. xx.) is that, hearing the question
asked "What is sense?" he fell to thinking often on the subject, till
it suddenly occurred to him that if bodies and their internal parts
were at rest, or were always in the same state of motion, there could
be no distinction of anything, and consequently no sense; the cause of
all things must therefore be sought in diversity of movements.
Starting from this principle he was driven to geometry for insight
into the ground and modes of motion. The biographies we possess do not
tell us where or when this great change of interest occurred. Nothing
is said, however, which contradicts a statement that on his third
journey in Europe he began to study the doctrine of motion more
seriously, being interested in it before; and as he claims more than
once (_L.W._ v. 303; _E.W._ vii. 468) to have explained light and
sound by a mechanical hypothesis as far back as 1630, the inspiration
may be assigned to the time of the second journey. But it was not till
the third journey that the new interest became an overpowering
passion, and the "philosopher" was on his way home before he had
advanced so far as to conceive the scheme of a system of thought to
the elaboration of which his life should henceforth be devoted.
Hobbes was able to carry out his plan in some twenty years or more
from the time of its conception, but the execution was so broken in
upon by political events, and so complicated with other labours, that
its stages can hardly be followed without some previous understanding
of the relations of the parts of the scheme, as there is reason to
believe they were sketched out from the beginning. His scheme was
first to work out, in a separate treatise _De corpore_, a systematic
doctrine of Body, showing how physical phenomena were universally
explicable in terms of motion, as motion or mechanical action was then
(through Galileo and others) understood--the theory of motion being
applied in the light of mathematical science, after quantity, the
subject-matter of mathematics, had been duly considered in its place
among the fundamental conceptions of philosophy, and a clear
indication had been given, at first starting, of the logical ground
and method of all philosophical inquiry. He would then single out Man
from the realm of nature, and, in a treatise _De homine_, show what
specific bodily motions were involved in the production of the
peculiar phenomena of sensation and knowledge, as also of the
affections and passions thence resulting, whereby man came into
relation with man. Finally he would consider, in a crowning treatise
_De cive_, how men, being naturally rivals or foes, were moved to
enter into the better relation of Society, and demonstrate how this
grand product of human wit must be regulated if men were not to fall
back into brutishness and misery. Thus he proposed to unite in one
coherent whole the separate phenomena of Body, Man and the State.
Hobbes came home, in 1637, to a country seething with discontent. The
reign of "Thorough" was collapsing, and the forces pent up since 1629
were soon to rend the fabric of the state. By these events Hobbes was
distracted from the orderly execution of his philosophic plan. The Short
Parliament, as he tells us at a later time (_E.W._ iv. 414), was not
dissolved before he had ready "a little treatise in English," in which
he sought to prove that the points of the royal prerogative which the
members were determined to dispute before granting supplies "were
inseparably annexed to the sovereignty which they did not then deny to
be in the king." Now it can be proved that at this time he had written
not only his _Human Nature_ but also his _De corpore politico_, the two
treatises (though published separately ten years later) having been
composed as parts of one work;[4] and there cannot be the least question
that together they make "the little treatise" just mentioned. We are
therefore to understand, first, that he wrote the earliest draft of his
political theory some years before the outbreak of the Civil War, and,
secondly, that this earliest draft was not written till, in accordance
with his philosophical conception, he had established the grounds of
polity in human nature. The first point is to be noted, because it has
often been supposed that Hobbes's political doctrine took its peculiar
complexion from his revulsion against the state of anarchy before his
eyes, as he wrote during the progress of the Civil War. The second point
must be maintained against his own implied, if not express, statement
some years later, when publishing his _De cive_ (_L.W._ ii. 151), that
he wrote this third part of his system before he had been able to set
down any finished representation of the fundamental doctrines which it
presupposed. In the beginning of 1640, therefore, he had written out his
doctrine of Man at least, with almost as much elaboration as it ever
received from him.
In Paris.
In November 1640 the Long Parliament succeeded to the Short, and sent
Laud and Strafford to the Tower, and Hobbes, who had become, or thought
he had become, a marked man by the circulation of his treatise (of
which, "though not printed, many gentlemen had copies"), hastened to
Paris, "the first of all that fled." He was now for the fourth and last
time abroad, and did not return for eleven years. Apparently he remained
the greater part of the time in or about Paris. He was welcomed back
into the scientific coterie about Mersenne, and forthwith had the task
assigned him of criticizing the _Meditations_ of Descartes, which had
been sent from Holland, before publication, to Mersenne with the
author's request for criticism from the most different points of view.
Hobbes was soon ready with the remarks that were printed as "Third"
among the six (later seven) sets of "Objections" appended, with
"Replies" from Descartes, to the _Meditations_, when published shortly
afterwards in 1641 (reprinted in _L.W._ v. 249-274). About the same time
also Mersenne sent to Descartes, as if they came from a friend in
England, another set of objections which Hobbes had to offer on various
points in the scientific treatises, especially the _Dioptrics_, appended
by Descartes to his _Discourse on Method_ in 1637; to which Descartes
replied without suspecting the common authorship of the two sets. The
result was to keep the two thinkers apart rather than bring them
together. Hobbes was more eager to bring forward his own philosophical
and physical ideas than careful to enter into the full meaning of
another's thought; and Descartes was too jealous, and too confident in
his conclusions to bear with this kind of criticism. He was very curt in
his replies to Hobbes's philosophical objections, and broke off all
correspondence on the physical questions, writing privately to Mersenne
that he had grave doubts of the Englishman's good faith in drawing him
into controversy (_L.W._ v. 277-307).
Meanwhile Hobbes had his thoughts too full of the political theory which
the events of the last years had ripened within him to settle, even in
Paris, to the orderly composition of his works. Though connected in his
own mind with his view of human nature and of nature generally, the
political theory, as he always declared, could stand by itself. Also,
while he may have hoped at this time to be able to add much (though he
never did) to the sketch of his doctrine of Man contained in the
unpublished "little treatise," he might extend, but could hardly
otherwise modify, the sketch he had there given of his carefully
articulated theory of Body Politic. Possibly, indeed, before that sketch
was written early in 1640, he may, under pressure of the political
excitement, have advanced no small way in the actual composition of the
treatise _De Cive_, the third section of his projected system. In any
case, it was upon this section, before the others, that he set to work
in Paris; and before the end of 1641 the book, as we know from the date
of the dedication (November 1), was finished. Though it was forthwith
printed in the course of the year 1642, he was content to circulate a
limited number of copies privately[5]; and when he found his work
received with applause (it was praised even by Descartes), he seems to
have taken this recognition of his philosophical achievement as an
additional reason for deferring publication till the earlier works of
the system were completed. Accordingly, for the next three or four
years, he remained steadily at work, and nothing appeared from him in
public except a short treatise on optics (_Tractatus opticus, L.W._ v.
217-248) included in the collection of scientific tracts published by
Mersenne under the title _Cogitata physico-mathematica_ in 1644, and a
highly compressed statement of his psychological application of the
doctrine of motion (_L.W._ v. 309-318), incorporated with Mersenne's
_Ballistica_, published in the same year. Thus or otherwise he had
become sufficiently known by 1645 to be chosen as a referee, with
Descartes, Roberval and others, in the famous controversy between John
Pell (q.v.) and the Dane Longomontanus (q.v.) over that problem of the
squaring of the circle which was seen later on to have such a fatal
charm for himself. But though about this time he had got ready all or
most of the materials for his fundamental work on Body, not even now was
he able to make way with its composition, and when he returned to it
after a number of years, he returned a different man.
Leviathan.
The Civil War had broken out in 1642, and the royalist cause began to
decline from the time of the defeat at Marston Moor, in the middle of
1644. Then commenced an exodus of the king's friends. Newcastle himself,
who was a cousin of Hobbes's late patron and to whom he dedicated the
"little treatise" of 1640, found his way to Paris, and was followed by a
stream of fugitives, many of whom were known to Hobbes. The sight of
these exiles made the political interest once more predominant in
Hobbes, and before long the revived feeling issued in the formation of a
new and important design. It first showed itself in the publication of
the _De cive_, of which the fame, but only the fame, had extended beyond
the inner circle of friends and critics who had copies of the original
impression. Hobbes now entrusted it, early in 1646, to his admirer, the
Frenchman Samuel de Sorbiere, by whom it was seen through the Elzevir
press at Amsterdam in 1647--having previously inserted a number of notes
in reply to objections, and also a striking preface, in the course of
which he explained its relation to the other parts of the system not yet
forthcoming, and the (political) occasion of its having been composed
and being now published before them.[6] So hopeless, meanwhile, was he
growing of being able to return home that, later on in the year, he was
on the point of leaving Paris to take up his abode in the south with a
French friend,[7] when he was engaged "by the month" as mathematical
instructor to the young prince of Wales, who had come over from Jersey
about the month of July. This engagement lasted nominally from 1646 to
1648 when Charles went to Holland. Thus thrown more than ever into the
company of the exiled royalists, it was then, if not earlier, that he
conceived his new design of bringing all his powers of thought and
expression to bear upon the production of an English book that should
set forth his whole theory of civil government in relation to the
political crisis resulting from the war. The _De cive_, presently to be
published, was written in Latin for the learned, and gave the political
theory without its foundation in human nature. The unpublished treatise
of 1640 contained all or nearly all that he had to tell concerning human
nature, but was written before the terrible events of the last years had
disclosed how men might still be urged by their anti-social passions
back into the abyss of anarchy. There was need of an exposition at once
comprehensive, incisive and popular. The State, it now seemed to Hobbes,
might be regarded as a great artificial man or monster (_Leviathan_),
composed of men, with a life that might be traced from its generation
through human reason under pressure of human needs to its dissolution
through civil strife proceeding from human passions. This, we may
suppose, was the presiding conception from the first, but the design may
have been variously modified in the three or four years of its
execution. Before the end, in 1650-1651, it is plain that he wrote in
direct reference to the greatly changed aspect of affairs in England.
The king being dead, and the royalist cause appearing to be hopelessly
lost, he did not scruple, in closing the work with a general "Review and
Conclusion," to raise the question of the subject's right to change
allegiance when a former sovereign's power to protect was irrecoverably
gone. Also he took advantage of the rule of the Commonwealth to indulge
much more freely than he might have otherwise dared in rationalistic
criticism of religious doctrines; while, amid the turmoil of sects, he
could the more forcibly urge that the preservation of social order, when
again firmly restored, must depend on the assumption by the civil power
of the right to wield all sanctions, supernatural as well as natural,
against the pretensions of any clergy, Catholic, Anglican or
Presbyterian, to the exercise of an _imperium in imperio_.
We know the _Leviathan_ only as it finally emerged from Hobbes's pen.
During the years of its composition he remained in or near Paris, at
first in attendance on his royal pupil, with whom he became a great
favourite. In 1647 Hobbes was overtaken by a serious illness which
disabled him for six months. Mersenne begged him not to die outside the
Roman Catholic Church, but Hobbes said that he had already considered
the matter sufficiently and afterwards took the sacrament according to
the rites of the Church of England. On recovering from this illness,
which nearly proved fatal, he resumed his literary task, and carried it
steadily forward to completion by the year 1650, having also within the
same time translated into English, with characteristic force of
expression, his Latin treatise. Otherwise the only thing known (from one
or two letters) of his life in those years is that from the year 1648 he
had begun to think of returning home; he was then sixty and might well
be weary of exile. When 1650 came, as if to prepare the way for the
reception of his _magnum opus_, he allowed the publication of his
earliest treatise, divided into two separate small volumes (_Human
Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policy, E.W._ iv. 1-76, and _De
Corpore Politico, or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politic_, pp.
77-228).[8] In 1651[9] he published his translation of the De Cive under
the title of _Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society_
(_E.W._ ii.). Meanwhile the printing of the greater work was proceeding,
and finally it appeared about the middle of the same year, 1651, under
the title of _Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a
Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil_ (_E.W._ iii.), with a quaint
frontispiece in which, from behind hills overlooking a fair landscape of
town and country, there towered the body (above the waist) of a crowned
giant, made up of tiny figures of human beings and bearing sword and
crozier in the two hands. It appeared, and soon its author was more
lauded and decried than any other thinker of his time; but the first
effect of its publication was to sever his connexion with the exiled
royalist party, and to throw him for protection on the revolutionary
Government. No sooner did copies of the book reach Paris than he found
himself shunned by his former associates, and though he was himself so
little conscious of disloyalty that he was forward to present a
manuscript copy "engrossed in vellum in a marvellous fair hand"[10] to
the young king of the Scots (who, after the defeat at Worcester, escaped
to Paris about the end of October), he was denied the royal presence
when he sought it shortly afterwards. Straightway, then, he saw himself
exposed to a double peril. The exiles had among them desperadoes who
could slay; and, besides exciting the enmity of the Anglican clergy
about the king, who bitterly resented the secularist spirit of his book,
he had compromised himself with the French authorities by his elaborate
attack on the papal system. In the circumstances, no resource was left
him but secret flight. Travelling with what speed he could in the depths
of a severe winter and under the effects of a recent (second) illness,
he managed to reach London, where, sending in his submission to the
council of state, he was allowed to subside into private life.
Return to London.
Controversy with Bramhall.
Though Hobbes came back, after his eleven years' absence, without having
as yet publicly proved his title to rank with the natural philosophers
of the age, he was sufficiently conscious of what he had been able to
achieve in _Leviathan_; and it was in no humble mood that he now, at
the age of sixty-four, turned to complete the fundamental treatise of
his philosophical system. Neither those whom his masterpiece soon roused
to enthusiasm, nor those whom it moved to indignation, were likely to be
indifferent to anything he should now write, whether it lay near to or
far from the region of practice. Taking up his abode in Fetter Lane,
London, on his return, and continuing to reside there for the sake of
intellectual society, even after renewing his old ties with the earl of
Devonshire, who lived in the country till the Restoration,[11] he worked
so steadily as to be printing the _De corpore_ in the year 1654.
Circumstances (of which more presently), however, kept the book back
till the following year, and meanwhile the readers of _Leviathan_ had a
different excitement. In 1654 a small treatise, "Of Liberty and
Necessity" (_E.W._ iv. 229-278), issued from the press, claiming to be
an answer to a discourse on the same subject by Bishop Bramhall of
Londonderry (afterwards archbishop of Armagh, d. 1663), addressed by
Hobbes to the marquis of Newcastle.[12] It had grown out of an oral
discussion between Hobbes and Bramhall in the marquis's presence at
Paris in 1646. Bramhall, a strong Arminian, had afterwards written down
his views and sent them to Newcastle to be answered in this form by
Hobbes. Hobbes duly replied, but not for publication, because he thought
the subject a delicate one. But it happened that Hobbes had allowed a
French acquaintance to have a private translation of his reply made by a
young Englishman, who secretly took a copy of the original for himself;
and now it was this unnamed purloiner who, in 1654, when Hobbes had
become famous and feared, gave it to the world of his own motion, with
an extravagantly laudatory epistle to the reader in its front. Upon
Hobbes himself the publication came as a surprise, but, after his plain
speaking in _Leviathan_, there was nothing in the piece that he need
scruple to have made known, and he seems to have condoned the act. On
the other hand, Bramhall, supposing Hobbes privy to the publication,
resented the manner of it, especially as no mention was made of his
rejoinder. Accordingly, in 1655, he printed everything that had passed
between them (under the title of _A Defence of the True Liberty of Human
Actions from Antecedent or Extrinsic Necessity_), with loud complaint
against the treatment he had received, and the promise added that, in
default of others, he himself would stand forward to expose the deadly
principles of _Leviathan_. About this time Hobbes had begun to be hard
pressed by other foes, and, being never more sure of himself than upon
the question of the will, he appears to have welcomed the opportunity
thus given him of showing his strength. By 1656 he was ready with his
_Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance_ (_E.W._ v.), in
which he replied with astonishing force to the bishop's rejoinder point
by point, besides explaining the occasion and circumstances of the whole
debate, and reproducing (as Bramhall had done) all the pieces from the
beginning. As perhaps the first clear exposition and defence of the
_psychological_ doctrine of determinism, Hobbes's own two pieces must
ever retain a classical importance in the history of the free-will
controversy; while Bramhall's are still worth study as specimens of
scholastic fence. The bishop, it should be added, returned to the charge
in 1658 with ponderous _Castigations of Mr Hobbes's Animadversions_, and
also made good his previous threat in a bulky appendix entitled _The
Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale_. Hobbes never took any notice of
the _Castigations_, but ten years later replied to the charges of
atheism, &c., made in the non-political part of the appendix, of which
he says he then heard for the first time (_E.W._ iv. 279-384). This
_Answer_ was first published after Hobbes's death.[13]
Controversy with Wallis and Ward.
We may now follow out the more troublesome conflict, or rather series
of conflicts, in which Hobbes became entangled from the time of
publishing his _De corpore_ in 1655, and which checkered all his
remaining years. In _Leviathan_ he had vehemently assailed the system
of the universities, as originally founded for the support of the
papal against the civil authority, and as still working social
mischief by adherence to the old learning. The attack was duly noted
at Oxford, where under the Commonwealth a new spirit of scientific
activity had begun to stir. In 1654 Seth Ward (1617-1689), the
Savilian professor of astronomy, replying in his _Vindiciae
academiarum_ to some other assaults (especially against John Webster's
_Examen of Academies_) on the academic system, retorted upon Hobbes
that, so far from the universities being now what he had known them in
his youth, he would find his geometrical pieces, when they appeared,
better understood there than he should like. This was said in
reference to the boasts in which Hobbes seems to have been freely
indulging of having squared the circle and accomplished other such
feats; and, when a year later the _De corpore_ (_L.W._ i.) finally
appeared, it was seen how the thrust had gone home. In the chapter
(xx.) of that work where Hobbes dealt with the famous problem whose
solution he thought he had found, there were left expressions against
Vindex (Ward) at a time when the solutions still seemed to him good;
but the solutions themselves, as printed, were allowed to be all in
different ways halting, as he naively confessed he had discovered only
when he had been driven by the insults of malevolent men to examine
them more closely with the help of his friends. A strange conclusion
this, and reached by a path not less strange, as was now to be
disclosed by a relentless hand. Ward's colleague, the more famous John
Wallis (q.v.), Savilian professor of geometry from 1649, had been
privy to the challenge thrown out in 1654, and it was arranged that
they should critically dispose of the _De corpore_ between them. Ward
was to occupy himself with the philosophical and physical sections,
which he did in leisurely fashion, bringing out his criticism in the
course of next year (_In Th. Hobbii philosophiam exercitatio
epistolica_). Wallis was to confine himself to the mathematical
chapters, and set to work at once with characteristic energy.
Obtaining an unbound copy of the _De corpore_, he saw by the mutilated
appearance of the sheets that Hobbes had repeatedly altered his
demonstrations before he issued them at last in their actual form,
grotesque as it was, rather than delay the book longer. Obtaining also
a copy of the work as it had been printed before Hobbes had any doubt
of the validity of his solutions, Wallis was able to track his whole
course from the time of Ward's provocation--his passage from
exultation to doubt, from doubt to confessed impotence, yet still
without abandoning the old assumption of confident strength; and all
his turnings and windings were now laid bare in one of the most
trenchant pieces of controversial writing ever penned. Wallis's
_Elenchus geometriae Hobbianae_, published in 1655 about three months
after the _De corpore_, contained also an elaborate criticism of
Hobbes's whole attempt to relay the foundations of mathematical
science in its place within the general body of reasoned knowledge--a
criticism which, if it failed to allow for the merit of the
conception, exposed only too effectually the utter inadequacy of the
result. Taking up mathematics when not only his mind was already
formed but his thoughts were crystallizing into a philosophical
system, Hobbes had, in fact, never put himself to school and sought to
work up gradually to the best knowledge of the time, but had been more
anxious from the first to become himself an innovator with whatever
insufficient means. The consequence was that, when not spending
himself in vain attempts to solve the impossible problems that have
always waylaid the fancy of self-sufficient beginners, he took an
interest only in the elements of geometry, and never had any notion of
the full scope of mathematical science, undergoing as it then was (and
not least at the hands of Wallis) the extraordinary development which
made it before the end of the century the potent instrument of
physical discovery which it became in the hands of Newton. He was even
unable, in dealing with the elementary conceptions of geometry, to
work out with any consistency the few original thoughts he had, and
thus became the easy sport of Wallis. At his advanced age, however,
and with the sense he had of his powers, he was not likely to be
brought to a better mind by so insulting an opponent. He did indeed,
before allowing an English translation of the _De corpore_ (_E.W._
i.) to appear in 1656, take care to remove some of the worst mistakes
exposed by Wallis, and, while leaving out all the references to
Vindex, now profess to make, in altered form, a series of mere
"attempts" at quadrature; but he was far from yielding the ground to
the enemy. With the translation,[14] in the spring of 1656, he had
ready _Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, one of Geometry,
the other of Astronomy, in the University of Oxford_ (_E.W._ vii.
181-356), in which, after reasserting his view of the principles of
geometry in opposition to Euclid's, he proceeded to repel Wallis's
objections with no lack of dialectical skill, and with an unreserve
equal to Wallis's own. He did not scruple, in the ardour of conflict,
even to maintain positions that he had resigned in the translation,
and he was not afraid to assume the offensive by a counter criticism
of three of Wallis's works then published. When he had thus disposed
of the "Paralogisms" of his more formidable antagonist in the first
five lessons, he ended with a lesson on "Manners" to the two
professors together, and set himself gravely at the close to show that
he too could be abusive. In this particular part of his task, it must
be allowed, he succeeded very well; his criticism of Wallis's works,
especially the great treatise _Arithmetica infinitorum_ (1655), only
showed how little able he was to enter into the meaning of the modern
analysis. Wallis, on his side, was not less ready to keep up the game
in English than he had been to begin it in Latin. Swift as before to
strike, in three months' time he had deftly turned his own word
against the would-be master by administering _Due Correction for Mr
Hobbes, or School Discipline for not saying his Lessons right_, in a
piece that differed from the _Elenchus_ only in being more biting and
unrestrained. Having an easy task in defending himself against
Hobbes's trivial criticism, he seized the opportunity given him by the
English translation of the _De corpore_ to track Hobbes again step by
step over the whole course, and now to confront him with his
incredible inconsistencies multiplied by every new utterance. But it
was no longer a fight over mathematical questions only. Wallis having
been betrayed originally by his fatal cleverness into the pettiest
carping at words, Hobbes had retorted in kind, and then it became a
high duty in the other to defend his Latin with great parade of
learning and give fresh provocation. One of Wallis's rough sallies in
this kind suggested to Hobbes the title of the next rejoinder with
which, in 1657, he sought to close the unseemly wrangle. Arguing in
the _Lessons_ that a mathematical point must have quantity, though
this were not reckoned, he had explained the Greek word [Greek:
stigme], used for a point, to mean a visible mark made with a hot
iron; whereupon he was charged by Wallis with gross ignorance for
confounding [Greek: stigme] and [Greek: stigma]. Hence the title of
his new piece: [Greek: Stigmai ageometrias, agroikias, antipoliteias,
amatheias], or _Marks of the Absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish
Church Politics, and Barbarisms of John Wallis, Professor of Geometry
and Doctor of Divinity_ (_E.W._ vii. 357-400). He now attacked more in
detail but not more happily than before Wallis's great work, while
hardly attempting any further defence of his own positions; also he
repelled with some force and dignity the insults that had been heaped
upon him, and fought the verbal points, but could not leave the field
without making political insinuations against his adversary, quite
irrelevant in themselves and only noteworthy as evidence of his own
resignation to Cromwell's rule. The thrusts were easily and nimbly
parried by Wallis in a reply (_Hobbiani puncti dispunctio_, 1657)
occupied mainly with the verbal questions. Irritating as it was, it
did not avail to shake Hobbes's determination to remain silent; and
thus at last there was peace for a time.
Before the strife flamed up again, Hobbes had published, in 1658, the
outstanding section of his philosophical system, and thus completed,
after a fashion, the scheme he had planned more than twenty years
before. So far as the treatise _De homine_ (_L.W._ ii. 11-32) was
concerned, the completion was more in name than in fact. It consisted
for the most part of an elaborate theory of vision which, though very
creditable to Hobbes's scientific insight, was out of place, or at
least out of proportion, in a philosophical consideration of human
nature generally. The remainder of the treatise, dealing cursorily
with some of the topics more fully treated in the _Human Nature_ and
the _Leviathan_, has all the appearance of having been tagged in haste
to the optical chapters (composed years before)[15] as a makeshift
for the proper transition required in the system from questions of
Body Natural to questions of Body Politic. Hobbes had in fact spent
himself in his earlier constructive efforts, and at the age of
seventy, having nothing to add to his doctrine of Man as it was
already in one form or another before the world, was content with
anything that might stand for the fulfilment of his philosophical
purpose. But he had still in him more than twenty years of vigorous
vitality, and, not conscious to himself of any shortcoming, looked
forward, now his hands were free, to doing battle for his doctrines.
Rather than remain quiet, on finding no notice taken of his latest
production, he would himself force on a new conflict with the enemy.
Wallis having meanwhile published other works and especially a
comprehensive treatise on the general principles of calculus
(_Mathesis universalis_, 1657), he might take this occasion of
exposing afresh the new-fangled methods of mathematical analysis and
reasserting his own earlier positions. Accordingly, by the spring of
1660, he had managed to put his criticism and assertions into five
dialogues under the title _Examinatio et emendatio mathematicae
hodiernae qualis explicatur in libris Johannis Wallisii_, with a sixth
dialogue so called, consisting almost entirely of seventy or more
propositions on the circle and cycloid.[16] Wallis, however, would not
take the bait. Hobbes then tried another tack. Next year, having
solved, as he thought, another ancient _crux_, the duplication of the
cube, he had his solution brought out anonymously at Paris in French,
so as to put Wallis and other critics off the scent and extort a
judgment that might be withheld from a work of his. The artifice was
successful, and no sooner had Wallis publicly refuted the solution
than Hobbes claimed the credit of it, and went more wonderfully than
ever astray in its defence. He presently republished it (in modified
form), with his remarks, at the end of a new Latin dialogue which he
had meanwhile written in defence of another part of his philosophical
doctrine. This was the _Dialogus physicus, sive De natura aeris_
(_L.W._ iv. 233-296), fulminated in 1661 against Boyle and other
friends of Wallis who, as he fancied, under the influence of that
malevolent spirit, were now in London, after the Restoration, forming
themselves into a society (incorporated as the Royal Society in 1662)
for experimental research, to the exclusion of himself personally, and
in direct contravention of the method of physical inquiry enjoined in
the _De corpore_.[17] All the laborious manipulation recorded in
Boyle's _New Experiments touching the Spring of the Air_ (1660), which
Hobbes chose, without the least warrant, to take as the manifesto of
the new "academicians," seemed to him only to confirm the conclusions
he had reasoned out years before from speculative principles, and he
warned them that if they were not content to begin where he had left
off their work would come to nought. To as much of this diatribe as
concerned himself Boyle quickly replied with force and dignity, but it
was from Hobbes's old enemy that retribution came, in the scathing
satire _Hobbius heauton-timorumenos_ (1662). Wallis, who had deftly
steered his course amid all the political changes of the previous
years, managing ever to be on the side of the ruling power, was now
apparently stung to fury by a wanton allusion in Hobbes's latest
dialogue to a passage of his former life (his deciphering for the
parliament the king's papers taken at Naseby), whereof he had once
boasted but after the Restoration could not speak or hear too little.
The revenge he took was crushing. Professing to be roused by the
attack on his friend Boyle, when he had scorned to lift a finger in
defence of himself against the earlier dialogues, he tore them all to
shreds with an art of which no general description can give an idea.
He got, however, upon more dangerous ground when, passing wholly by
the political insinuation against himself, he roundly charged Hobbes
with having written _Leviathan_ in support of Oliver's title, and
deserted his royal master in distress. Hobbes seems to have been
fairly bewildered by the rush and whirl of sarcasm with which Wallis
drove him anew from every mathematical position he had ever taken up,
and did not venture forth into the field of scientific controversy
again for some years, when he had once followed up the physical
dialogue of 1661 by seven shorter ones, with the inevitable appendix,
entitled _Problemata physica, una cum magnitudine circuli_ (_L.W._ iv.
297-384), in 1662.[18] But all the more eagerly did he take advantage
of Wallis's loose calumny to strike where he felt himself safe. His
answer to the personal charges took the form of a letter about himself
in the third person addressed to Wallis in 1662, under the title of
_Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners and Religion of
Thomas Hobbes_ (_E.W._ iv. 409-440). In this piece, which is of great
biographical value, he told his own and Wallis's "little stories
during the time of the late rebellion" with such effect that Wallis,
like a wise man, attempted no further reply. Thus ended the second
bout.
After a time Hobbes took heart again and began a third period of
controversial activity, which did not end, on his side, till his
ninetieth year. Little need be added to the simple catalogue of the
untiring old man's labours in this last stage of his life. The first
piece, published in 1666, _De principiis et ratiocinatione
geometrarum_ (_L.W._ iv. 385-484), was designed, as the sub-title
declared, to lower the pride of geometrical professors by showing that
there was no less uncertainty and error in their works than in those
of physical or ethical writers. Wallis replied shortly in the
_Philosophical Transactions_ (August 1666). Three years later he
brought his three great achievements together in compendious form,
_Quadratura circuli, Cubatio sphaerae, Duplicatio cubi_, and as soon
as they were once more refuted by Wallis, reprinted them with an
answer to the objections, in compliment to the grand-duke of Tuscany,
who paid him attentions on a visit to England in 1669 (_L.W._ iv.
485-522). Wallis, who had promised to leave him alone henceforward,
refuted him again before the year was out. In 1671 he worked up his
propositions over again in _Rosetum geometricum_ (_L.W._ v. 1-50), as
a fragrant offering to the geometrical reader, appending a criticism
(_Censura brevis_, pp. 50-88) on the first part of Wallis's treatise
_De motu_, published in 1669; also he sent _Three Papers_ to the Royal
Society on selected points treated very briefly, and when Wallis,
still not weary of confuting, shortly replied, published them
separately with triumphant _Considerations on Dr Wallis's Answer to
them_ (_E.W._ vii. 429-448). Next year (1672), having now, as he
believed, established himself with the Royal Society, he proceeded to
complete the discomfiture of Wallis by a public address to the Society
on all the points at issue between them from the beginning, _Lux
Mathematica excussa collisionibus Johannis Wallisii et Thomae
Hobbesii_ (_L.W._ v. 89-150), the light, as the author R. R. (Roseti
Repertor) added, being here "increased by many very brilliant rays."
Wallis replied in the _Transactions_, and then finally held his hand.
Hobbes's energy was not yet exhausted. In 1674, at the age of
eighty-six, he published his _Principia et problemata aliquot
geometrica, ante desperata nunc breviter explicata et demonstrata_
(_L.W._ v. 150-214), containing in the chapters dealing with questions
of principle not a few striking observations, which ought not to be
overlooked in the study of his philosophy. His last piece of all,
_Decameron physiologicum_ (_E.W._ vii. 69-180), in 1678, was a new set
of dialogues on physical questions, most of which he had treated in a
similar fashion before; but now, in dealing with gravitation, he was
able to fire a parting shot at Wallis; and one more demonstration of
the equality of a straight line to the arc of a circle, thrown in at
the end, appropriately closed the strangest warfare in which perverse
thinker ever engaged.[19]
Later Years.
We must now turn back to trace the fortunes of Hobbes and his other
doings in the last twenty years of his life. All these controversial
writings on mathematics and physics represent but one half of his
activity after the age of seventy; though, as regards the other half, it
is not possible, for a reason that will be seen, to say as definitely in
what order the works belonging to the period were produced. From the
time of the Restoration he acquired a new prominence in the public eye.
No year had passed since the appearance of _Leviathan_ without some
indignant protest against the influence which its trenchant doctrine was
calculated to produce upon minds longing above everything for civil
repose; but after the Restoration "Hobbism" became a fashionable creed,
which it was the duty of every lover of true morality and religion to
denounce. Two or three days after Charles's arrival in London, Hobbes
drew in the street the notice of his former pupil, and was at once
received into favour. The young king, if he had ever himself resented
the apparent disloyalty of the "Conclusion" of _Leviathan_, had not
retained the feeling long, and could appreciate the principles of the
great book when the application of them happened, as now, to be turned
in his own favour. He had, besides, a relish for Hobbes's wit (as he
used to say, "Here comes the bear to be baited"), and did not like the
old man the less because his presence at court scandalized the bishops
or the prim virtue of Chancellor Hyde. He even went the length of
bestowing on Hobbes (but not always paying) a pension of L100, and had
his portrait hung up in the royal closet. These marks of favour,
naturally, did not lessen Hobbes's self-esteem, and perhaps they
explain, in his later writings, a certain slavishness toward the regal
authority, which is wholly absent from his rational demonstration of
absolutism in the earlier works. At all events Hobbes was satisfied with
the rule of a king who had appreciated the author of _Leviathan_, and
protected him when, after a time, protection in a very real sense became
necessary. His eagerness to defend himself against Wallis's imputation
of disloyalty, and his apologetic dedication of the _Problemata physica_
to the king, are evidence of the hostility with which he was being
pressed as early as 1662; but it was not till 1666 that he felt himself
seriously in danger. In that year the Great Fire of London, following on
the Great Plague, roused the superstitious fears of the people, and the
House of Commons embodied the general feeling in a bill against atheism
and profaneness. On the 17th of October it was ordered that the
committee to which the bill was referred "should be empowered to receive
information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and
profaneness, or against the essence and attributes of God, and in
particular the book published in the name of one White,[20] and the book
of Mr Hobbes called the _Leviathan_, and to report the matter with their
opinion to the House." Hobbes, then verging upon eighty, was terrified
at the prospect of being treated as a heretic, and proceeded to burn
such of his papers as he thought might compromise him. At the same time
he set himself, with a very characteristic determination, to inquire
into the actual state of the law of heresy. The results of his
investigation were first announced in three short Dialogues added (in
place of the old "Review and Conclusion," for which the day had passed)
as an Appendix to his Latin translation of _Leviathan_ (_L.W._ iii.),
included with the general collection of his works published at Amsterdam
in 1668. In this appendix, as also in the posthumous tract, published in
1680, _An Historical Narration concerning Heresy and the Punishment
thereof_ (_E.W._ iv. 385-408), he aimed at showing that, since the High
Court of Commission had been put down, there remained no court of heresy
at all to which he was amenable, and that even when it stood nothing was
to be declared heresy but what was at variance with the Nicene Creed, as
he maintained the doctrine of _Leviathan_ was not.
The only consequence that came of the parliamentary scare was that
Hobbes could never afterwards get permission to print anything on
subjects relating to human conduct. The collected edition of his Latin
works (in two quarto volumes) appeared at Amsterdam in 1668, because he
could not obtain the censor's licence for its publication at London,
Oxford or Cambridge. Other writings which he had finished, or on which
he must have been engaged about this time, were not made public till
after his death--the king apparently having made it the price of his
protection that no fresh provocation should be offered to the popular
sentiment. The most important of the works composed towards 1670, and
thus kept back, is the extremely spirited dialogue to which he gave the
title _Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England
and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on from the
year 1640 to the year 1660_.[21] To the same period probably belongs the
unfinished _Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common
Laws of England_ (_E.W._ vi. 1-160), a trenchant criticism of the
constitutional theory of English government as upheld by Coke. Aubrey
takes credit for having tried to induce Hobbes to write upon the subject
in 1664 by presenting him with a copy of Bacon's _Elements of the Laws
of England_, and though the attempt was then unsuccessful, Hobbes later
on took to studying the statute-book, with _Coke upon Littleton_. One
other posthumous production also (besides the tract on Heresy before
mentioned) may be referred to this, if not, as Aubrey suggests, an
earlier time--the two thousand and odd elegiac verses in which he gave
his view of ecclesiastical encroachment on the civil power; the quaint
verses, disposed in his now favourite dialogue-form, were first
published, nine years after his death, under the title _Historia
ecclesiastica_ (_L.W._ v. 341-408), with a preface by Thomas Rymer.
For some time Hobbes was not even allowed to utter a word of protest,
whatever might be the occasion that his enemies took to triumph over
him. In 1669 an unworthy follower--Daniel Scargil by name, a fellow of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge--had to recant publicly and confess
that his evil life had been the result of Hobbist doctrines. In 1674
John Fell, the dean of Christ Church, who bore the charges of the Latin
translation of Anthony Wood's _History and Antiquities of the University
of Oxford_ (1670), struck out all the complimentary epithets in the
account of his life, and substituted very different ones; but this time
the king did suffer him to defend himself by publishing a dignified
letter (_Vit. Auct._ pp. xlvii.-l.), to which Fell replied by adding to
the translation when it appeared a note full of the grossest insults.
And, amid all his troubles, Hobbes was not without his consolations. No
Englishman of that day stood in the same repute abroad, and foreigners,
noble or learned, who came to England, never forgot to pay their
respects to the old man, whose vigour and freshness of intellect no
progress of the years seemed able to quench. Among these was the
grand-duke of Tuscany (Ferdinand II.), who took away some works and a
portrait to adorn the Medicean library.
His pastimes in the latest years were as singular as his labours. The
autobiography in Latin verse, with its playful humour, occasional pathos
and sublime self-complacency, was thrown off at the age of eighty-four.
At eighty-five, in the year 1673, he sent forth a translation of four
books of the _Odyssey_ (ix.-xii.) in rugged but not seldom happily
turned English rhymes; and, when he found this _Voyage of Ulysses_
eagerly received, he had ready by 1675 a complete translation of both
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ (_E.W._ x.), prefaced by a lively dissertation
"Concerning the Virtues of an Heroic Poem," showing his unabated
interest in questions of literary style. After 1675, he passed his time
at his patron's seats in Derbyshire, occupied to the last with
intellectual work in the early morning and in the afternoon hours, which
it had long been his habit to devote to thinking and to writing. Even as
late as August 1679 he was promising his publisher "somewhat to print in
English." The end came very soon afterwards. A suppression of urine in
October, in spite of which he insisted upon being conveyed with the
family from Chatsworth to Hardwick Hall towards the end of November, was
followed by a paralytic stroke, under which he sank on the 4th of
December, in his ninety-second year. He lies buried in the neighbouring
church of Ault Hucknall.
Personal characteristics.
He was tall and erect in figure, and lived on the whole a temperate
life, though he used to say that he had been drunk about a hundred
times. His favourite exercise was tennis, which he played regularly even
after the age of seventy. Socially he was genial and courteous, though
in argument he occasionally lost his temper. As a friend he was generous
and loyal. Intellectually bold in the extreme, he was curiously timid in
ordinary life, and is said to have had a horror of ghosts. He read
little, and often boasted that he would have known as little as other
men if he had read as much. He appears to have had an illegitimate
daughter for whom he made generous provision. In the National Portrait
Gallery there is a portrait of him by J. M. Wright, and two others are
in the possession of the Royal Society.
Place in English thought.
As already suggested, it cannot be allowed that Hobbes falls into any
regular succession from Bacon; neither can it be said that he handed on
the torch to Locke. He was the one English thinker of the first rank in
the long period of two generations separating Locke from Bacon, but,
save in the chronological sense, there is no true relation of succession
among the three. It would be difficult even to prove any ground of
affinity among them beyond a desposition to take sense as a prime factor
in the account of subjective experience: their common interest in
physical science was shared equally by rationalist thinkers of the
Cartesian school, and was indeed begotten of the time. Backwards,
Hobbes's relations are rather with Galileo and the other inquirers who,
from the beginning of the 17th century, occupied themselves with the
physical world in the manner that has come later to be distinguished by
the name of science in opposition to philosophy. But even more than in
external nature, Hobbes was interested in the phenomena of social life,
presenting themselves so impressively in an age of political revolution.
So it came to pass that, while he was unable, by reason of imperfect
training and too tardy development, with all his pains, to make any
contribution to physical science or to mathematics as instrumental in
physical research, he attempted a task which no other adherent of the
new "mechanical philosophy" conceived--nothing less than such a
universal construction of human knowledge as would bring Society and Man
(at once the matter and maker of Society) within the same principles of
scientific explanation as were found applicable to the world of Nature.
The construction was, of course, utterly premature, even supposing it
were inherently possible; but it is Hobbes's distinction, in his
century, to have conceived it, and he is thereby lifted from among the
scientific workers with whom he associated to the rank of those
philosophical thinkers who have sought to order the whole domain of
human knowledge. The effects of his philosophical endeavour may be
traced on a variety of lines. Upon every subject that came within the
sweep of his system, except mathematics and physics, his thoughts have
been productive of thought. When the first storm of opposition from
smaller men had begun to die down, thinkers of real weight, beginning
with Cumberland and Cudworth, were moved by their aversion to his
analysis of the moral nature of man to probe anew the question of the
natural springs and the rational grounds of human action; and thus it
may be said that Hobbes gave the first impulse to the whole of that
movement of ethical speculation that, in modern times, has been carried
on with such remarkable continuity in England. In politics the revulsion
from his particular conclusions did not prevent the more clear-sighted
of his opponents from recognizing the force of his supreme demonstration
of the practical irresponsibility of the sovereign power, wherever
seated, in the state; and, when in a later age the foundations of a
positive theory of legislation were laid in England, the school of
Bentham--James Mill, Grote, Molesworth--brought again into general
notice the writings of the great publicist of the 17th century, who,
however he might, by the force of temperament, himself prefer the rule
of one, based his whole political system upon a rational regard to the
common weal. Finally, the psychology of Hobbes, though too undeveloped
to guide the thoughts or even perhaps arrest the attention of Locke,
when essaying the scientific analysis of knowledge, came in course of
time (chiefly through James Mill) to be connected with the theory of
associationism developed from within the school of Locke, in different
ways, by Hartley and Hume; nor is it surprising that the later
associationists, finding their principle more distinctly formulated in
the earlier thinker, should sometimes have been betrayed into
affiliating themselves to Hobbes rather than to Locke. For his ethical
theories see Ethics.
Sufficient information is given in the _Vitae Hobbianae auctarium_
(_L.W._ i. p. lxv. ff.) concerning the frequent early editions of
Hobbes's separate works, and also concerning the works of those who
wrote against him, to the end of the 17th century. In the 18th
century, after Clarke's _Boyle Lectures_ of 1704-1705, the opposition
was less express. In 1750 _The Moral and Political Works_ were
collected, with life, &c., by Dr Campbell, in a folio edition,
including in order, _Human Nature_, _De corpore politico_,
_Leviathan_, _Answer to Bramhall's Catching of the Leviathan_,
_Narration concerning Heresy_, _Of Liberty and Necessity_, _Behemoth_,
_Dialogue of the Common Laws_, the Introduction to the _Thucydides_,
_Letter to Davenant and two others_, the Preface to the _Homer_, _De
mirabilibus Pecci_ (with English translation), _Considerations on the
Reputation, &., of T. H._ In 1812 the _Human Nature_ and the _Liberty
and Necessity_ (with supplementary extracts from the _Questions_ of
1656) were reprinted in a small edition of 250 copies, with a
meritorious memoir (based on Campbell) and dedication to Horne Tooke,
by Philip Mallet. Molesworth's edition (1839-1845), dedicated to
Grote, has been referred to in a former note. Of translations may be
mentioned _Les Elemens philosophiques du citoyen_ (1649) and _Le Corps
politique_ (1652), both by S. de Sorbiere, conjoined with _Le Traite
de la nature humaine_, by d'Holbach, in 1787, under the general title
_Les Oeuvres philosophiques et politiques de Thomas Hobbes_; a
translation of the first section, "Computatio sive logica," of the _De
corpore_, included by Destutt de Tracy with his _Elemens d'ideologie_
(1804); a translation of _Leviathan_ into Dutch in 1678, and another
(anonymous) into German--_Des Englanders Thomas Hobbes Leviathan oder
der kirchliche und burgerliche Staat_ (Halle, 1794, 2 vols.); a
translation of the _De cive_ by J. H. v. Kirchmann--_T. Hobbes:
Abhandlung uber den Burger, &c._ (Leipzig, 1873). Important later
editions are those of Ferdinand Tonnies, _Behemoth_ (1889), on which
see Croom Robertson's _Philosophical Remains_ (1894), p. 451;
_Elements of Law_ (1889).
_Biographical and Critical Works._--There are three accounts of
Hobbes's life, first published together in 1681, two years after his
death, by R. B. (Richard Blackbourne, a friend of Hobbes's admirer,
John Aubrey), and reprinted, with complimentary verses by Cowley and
others, at the beginning of Sir W. Molesworth's collection of the
_Latin Works_: (1) _T. H. Malmesb. vita_ (pp. xiii.-xxi.), written by
Hobbes himself, or (as also reported) by T. Rymer, at his dictation;
(2) _Vitae Hobbianae auctarium_ (pp. xxii.-lxxx.), turned into Latin
from Aubrey's English; (3) _T. H. Malmesb. vita carmine expressa_ (pp.
lxxxi.-xcix.), written by Hobbes at the age of eighty-four (first
published by itself in 1680). The _Life of Mr T. H. of Malmesburie_,
printed among the _Lives of Eminent Men_, in 1813, from Aubrey's
papers in the Bodleian, &c. (vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 593-637), contains
some interesting particulars not found in the _Auctarium_. All that is
of any importance for Hobbes's life is contained in G. Croom
Robertson's _Hobbes_ (1886) in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, and
Sir Leslie Stephen's _Hobbes_ (1904) in the "English Men of Letters"
series, both of which deal fully with his philosophy also. See also F.
Tonnies, _Hobbes Leben und Lehre_ (1896), _Hobbes-Analekten_ (1904
foll.); G. Zart, _Einfluss der englischen Philosophie seit Bacon auf
die deutsche Philosophie des 18ten Jahrh._ (Berlin, 1881); G. Brandt,
_Thomas Hobbes: Grundlinien seiner Philosophie_ (1895); G. Lyon, _La
Philos. de Hobbes_ (1893); J. M. Robertson, _Pioneer Humanists_
(1907); J. Rickaby, _Free Will and Four English Philosophers_ (1906),
pp. 1-72; J. Watson, _Hedonistic Theories_ (1895); W. Graham, _English
Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine_ (1899); W. J. H. Campion,
_Outlines of Lectures on Political Science_ (1895). (G. C. R.; X.)