Hume (David), philosopher and historian, b. Edinburgh, 26 April, 1711. In 1735 he went to France to study, and there wrote his Treatise on Human Nature, published in 1739. This work then excited no interest friendly or hostile. Hume’s Essays Moral and Political appeared in 1742, and in 1752 his Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals which of all his writings he considered the best. In 1755 he published his Natural History of Religion, which was furiously attacked by Warburton in an anonymous tract. In 1754 he published the first volume of his History of England, which he did not complete till 1761. He became secretary to the Earl of Hertford, ambassador at Paris, where he was cordially welcomed by the philosophers. He returned in 1766, bringing Rousseau with him. Hume became Under Secretary of State in 1767, and in 1769 retired to Edinburgh, where he died 25 Aug. 1776. After his death his Dialogues on Natural Religion were published, and also some unpublished essays on Suicide, the Immortality of the Soul, etc. Hume’s last days were singularly cheerful. His friend, the famous Dr. Adam Smith, considered him “as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.”
Hunt (James), Ph.D., physiologist, b. 1833, was the founder of the Anthropological Society, of which he was the first president, ’63. He was the author of the Negro’s Place in Nature, a work on Stammering, etc. Died 28 Aug. 1869.
Hunt (James Henry Leigh), poet, essayist and critic, b. Southgate, Middlesex, 19 Oct. 1784. was educated with Lamb and Coleridge at Christ’s Hospital, London. He joined his brother John in editing first the Sunday News, 1805, and then the Examiner, 1808. They were condemned to pay a fine, each of £500, and to be imprisoned for two years, 1812–14, for a satirical article, in which the prince regent was called an “Adonis of fifty.” This imprisonment procured him the friendship of Shelley and Byron, with whom, after editing the Indicator he was associated in editing the Liberal. He wrote many choice books of poems and criticisms, and in his Religion of the Heart, ’53, repudiates orthodoxy. Died 28 Aug. 1859.
Hutten (Ulrich von), German poet and reformer, b. of noble family Steckelberg, Hesse Cassel, 22 April 1488. He was sent to Fulda to become a monk, but fled in 1504 to Erfurt, where he studied humaniora. After some wild adventures he went to Wittenberg in 1510, and Vienna 1512, and also studied at Pavia and Bologna. He returned to Germany in 1517 as a common soldier in the army of Maximilian. His great object was to free his country from sacerdotalism, and most of his writings are satires against the Pope, monks and clergy. Persecution drove him to Switzerland, but the Council of Zurich drove him out of their territory and he died on the isle of Ufnau, Lake Zürich, 29 Aug. 1523.
Hutton (James), Scotch geologist and philosopher, b. at Edinburgh 3 June, 1736. He graduated as M.D. at Leyden in 1749, and investigated the strata of the north of Scotland. He published a dissertation on Light, Heat, and Fire, and in his Theory of the World, 1795, attributes geological phenomena to the action of fire. He also wrote a work entitled An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, the opinions of which, says Chalmers, “abound in sceptical boldness and philosophical infidelity.” Died 26 March 1797.
Huxley (Thomas Henry), LL.D., Ph.D., F.R.S., b. Ealing, 4 May, 1825. He studied medicine, and in ’46 took M.R.C.S., and was appointed assistant naval surgeon. His cruises afforded opportunities for his studies of natural history. In ’51 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in ’54 was made Professor at the School of Mines. In ’60 he lectured on “The Relation of Man to the Lower Animals,” and afterwards published Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863). In addition to numerous scientific works, Professor Huxley has written numerous forcible articles, addresses, etc., collected in Lay Sermons, ’70; Critiques and Addresses, ’73; and American Addresses, ’79. A vigorous writer, his Hume in the “English Men of Letters” series is a model of clear exposition. In his controversies with Mr. Gladstone, in his articles on the Evolution of Theology, and in his recent polemic with the Rev. Mr. Wace in the Nineteenth Century, Professor Huxley shows all his freshness, and proves himself as ready in demolishing theological fictions as in demonstrating scientific facts. He states as his own life aims “The popularising of science and untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England, as everywhere else, and to whatever denomination it may belong, is the deadly enemy of science.”
Hypatia, Pagan philosopher and martyr, b. Alexandria early in the second half of the fourth century. She became a distinguished lecturer and head of the Neo-Platonic school (c. 400). The charms of her eloquence brought many disciples. By a Christian mob, incited by St. Cyril, she was in Lent 415 torn from her chariot, stripped naked, cut with oyster-shells and finally burnt piecemeal. This true story of Christian persecution has been disguised into a legend related of St. Catherine in the Roman breviary (Nov. 25).
Ibn Bajjat. See [Avenpace].
Ibn Massara. See [Massara] in Supplement.
Ibn Rushd. See [Averroes].