Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/767

 HOBBEMA HOBBES 749 The city is the seat of an Anglican and a Cath- olic bishop, has two cathedrals and 21 other churches and chapels, a high school, numer- ous private seminaries, a mechanics' institute, a magnetic observatory, and a royal society of sciences, which publishes its transactions. The Derwent is navigable by considerable ves- sels for 3 m. above the town, and by craft of 50 tons for 20 m. higher. HOBBEMA, or Hobbima, Minderhout, a Dutch painter, born probably in Coevorden, died in Amsterdam, Dec. 14, 1709. Nothing is known of his personal history, except that he proba- bly lived in Amsterdam, and was on terms of intimacy with Ruysdael, Berghem, and Van der Yelde. His subjects are simple land- scapes, but the admirable perspective, the ful- ness and purity of color, and the firmness of execution give to his homeliest scenes a mark- ed and distinctive character. The figures in his pictures were frequently added by Teniers, Ostade, or Van der Velde. HOBBES, Thomas, an English philosopher, born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, April 5, 1588, died in Derbyshire, Dec. 4, 1679. The son of a clergyman, he was sent at the age of 15 to Magdalen hall, Oxford, where for five years he applied himself to logic and the Aristotelian philosophy. He afterward became private tu- tor in the family of Lord Hardwicke (soon created earl of Devonshire), and travelled in France and Italy with his pupil, Lord Caven- dish. On his return to England he was inti- mately associated with Lord Herbert of Cher- bury, Ben Jonson, and Lord Bacon. Ben Jonson revised for him his first publication, the translation of Thucydides (London, 1628). Severely afflicted by the death both of his patron and pupil, he again visited France and Italy with a son of Sir Gervase Clifton, but returned to England in 1631 at the solicita- tion of the countess dowager of Devonshire to undertake the education of the young earl. With his new pupil he went abroad again in 1634, and during an absence of three years enjoyed the friendship of Father Mersenne, Gassendi, and Galileo. He withdrew again from England in 1640 at the approach of the civil war, and resided for more than ten years in Paris, where he became acquainted with Descartes. In 1642 a few copies of his Ele- menta PMlosopliica de Cive were printed at Paris and distributed among his friends, and the work was published by the Elzevirs at Amsterdam in 1647. In that year he was ap- pointed mathematical tutor to the prince of Wales, afterward Charles II., then resident in Paris. In 1650 his treatises on " Human Fa- ture " and De Corpore Politico appeared in Lon- don, and in 1651 "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesi- astical and Civil." The last contains the com- plete system of his philosophy, treating the same subjects often in the same language as his three previous works. After its publication he returned to England, and wrote a "Letter on Liberty and Necessity" (1654), which in- volved him in a long controversy with Bish- ops Bramhall and Laney. He carried on also for 20 years a controversy with Dr. Wallis, professor of geometry at Oxford, which gained him little honor among mathematicians; his claim was that he had discovered the quadra- ture of the circle. His opinions were during this period assailed by all classes of religion- ists and by many eminent writers; and in 1666 his "Leviathan" and De Give were censured by parliament. Yet he was personally esteem- ed by his former pupil the king, who granted him a pension of 100 from the privy purse, though, yielding to the persuasions of divines, he forbade the philosopher his presence. His fame, too, was spread throughout Europe; foreign ambassadors were interested to see him; and Cosmo de' Medici, prince of Tus- cany, visited him and solicited his portrait and a collection of his works to take to Florence. He passed the latter years of his life at the earl of Devonshire's seat in Derbyshire, and contin- ued to write at an advanced age. His principal later publications are an English version of the Iliad and Odyssey (1675-'7), of which three editions were called for in less than ten years, though Pope characterizes it as "too mean for criticism ;" the " Decameron Physiologi- cum, or Ten Dialogues on Natural Philoso- phy" (1678); an autobiography in Latin verse (1679, translated by himself into English verse), and "Behemoth, or the History of the Civil Wars of England, from 1640 to 1660," pub- lished posthumously (1679). He possessed remarkable independence and disinterested- ness of character. The earl of Devonshire entertained him in ease, leaving him free to follow his own tastes, and was wont to speak of him as a humorist whom nobody could ac- count for. The speculations of Hobbes base all knowledge upon sensation ; and, as the senses perceive only what is material, matter is the only reality. The mind is physical, and all thoughts result from the pressure of mate- rial objects upon it. Sensation consists in the movement of particles of matter, which grad- ually ceases after the actual period of impact, and the vividness of the conception gradually diminishes. This "decaying sense" is imagi- nation, but, if viewed as a lingering image of the past, it is memory. Knowledge is of two kinds: first, "knowledge original," derived from direct impressions of external things by sensation ; second, remembrance of the for- mer, or knowledge of words or of the truth of propositions. He lays immense stress on language ; understanding is only the faculty of perceiving the relation between words and things ; and errors in reasoning arise only from defective definitions and the wrong employment of names. Yet Hobbes wrote the weighty aphorism: "Words are wise men's count- ers- they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools." His ethics follow necessarily from his metaphysics. Good and