Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

Extract

The sudden death of Professor Hobhouse on June 21, at the age of sixty-four years, at Alençon, Normandy, is a heavy loss to science and philosophy. He combined in a rare degree great powers of metaphysical speculation and synthesis with capacity for painstaking and detailed research in many fields of empirical science. He was one of the pioneers of comparative psychology; he developed a technique of the greatest value in the handling of the vast and chaotic data of anthropology; he laid the foundations of a scientific sociology; and he has attempted a synthesis of the results of his scientific and philosophical studies on a scale which must win for him a high place among the systematic thinkers of the world. As a teacher and a social leader he inspired love and reverence by the nobility of his thought and utterance, his passion for justice, his wise and tender humanity. Members of the Philosophical Institute have special cause to mourn his loss. When the Institute was founded in 1925, it was the unanimous wish of all connected with its foundation that Professor Hobhouse should be its chairman; and it has been a great piece of good fortune for the Institute to have had the benefit of his ripe wisdom and extensive experience during the first five years of its life.