HODGSON
HOLBACH
1820 to 1843 he was assistant resident in
Nepal. Hodgson, though a most conscien
tious official, made so thorough a study of
Hindu religion and literature, and collected
so many manuscripts, that Burnouf called
him " the founder of our Buddhist studies."
He also contributed materially to zoology
and ethnology. When importuned about
his religious belief he said : " I do not care
to talk about the unknowable " (Life of
B. H. Hodgson, by Sir W. W. Hunter,
1896, p. 332). D. May 23, 1894.
HODGSON, Shadworth Hollway, philo sopher. B. 1832. Ed. Eugby and Oxford (Corpus Christi). His wife dying three years after marriage, Mr. Hodgson devoted his life to philosophy and attained an acknowledged mastery of it. He was President of the Aristotelian Society from 1880 to 1894. His chief works were Time and Space (1865), The Philosophy of Reflec tion (2 vols., 1878), and The Metaphysic of Experience (1898). His religious views are expounded chiefly in The Philosophy of Reflection, ch. xi. He held that " the notion of a soul as an immaterial substance is exploded " (ii, 258), and he merely acknow ledged a God as " the Spirit of the Whole." The creeds he emphatically rejected. D. June 13, 1912.
HODGSON, William, M.D., writer. B. 1745. Ed. Holland. He was a practising physician who adopted advanced ideas, and suffered two years imprisonment (1793-95) for toasting "The French Eepublic." While n Newgate he wrote The Commonwealth of Reason (1795) and translated Mirabaud s (or d Holbach s) Systeme de la Nature. After his release he abandoned politics for science. D. Mar. 2, 1851.
HOELDERLIN, J. C. F. See HOLDER- LIN, J. C. F.
HOFFDING, Professor Harald, Ph.D., LL.D., D.Sc., Litt.D., Danish philosopher. B. Mar. 11, 1843. Ed. Copenhagen Metro politan School and University. He studied
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at first for the Church, but he abandoned
theology and graduated in philosophy. He
was appointed lecturer at Copenhagen
University in 1880, and was professor of
philosophy there from 1883 to 1915. He
is a member of the Eoyal Danish Society
of Science and Letters, corresponding
member of the Institut de France and the
Academia dei Lincei, corresponding fellow
of the British Academy and Aristotelian
Society, etc. In his numerous works
Professor Hoffding expounds a spiritual
Monism. He excludes a personal God,
and he is Agnostic as to personal immor
tality. The essential religious principle is
"the conservation of values," moral and
aesthetic, and " our greatest model is the
Greek way of life " (The Philosophy of
Religion, Eng. trans. 1906, pp. 379-80).
See also his Pensee Humaine (1911).
HOGG, Thomas Jefferson, writer. B. May 24, 1792. Ed. Durham Grammar School and Oxford (University College). He was an intimate friend of Shelley at Oxford, and was expelled with him, as he refused to disavow Shelley s Necessity of Atheism (1811). He studied law, and was called to the Bar in 1817, but practised little. In his later years he was a Eevising Barrister. He wrote an unfinished life of his friend Shelley (Life of Shelley, 2 vols., 1858). D. Aug. 27, 1862.
HOLBACH, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron Yon, Encyclopaedist. B. 1723. Ed. Paris. He was a wealthy German, who settled in Paris and made his house one of the chief centres of the Encyclopaedists indeed, one of the chief social centres of culture in Europe. Holding that religion was one of the greatest hindrances to the happiness of the race, he wrote many articles for the Dictionnaire Encyclopedique, and under various pseudonyms he issued several drastically anti-Christian works (Le Christianisme devoile, La contagion sacree, De I imposture sacerdotale, etc.). He also procured translations of Deistic works from the German and English. They were
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