HELVETIUS
HENNE AM BHYN
anatomy and physiology of the sense-
organs, from which he excluded the idea
of design. An outspoken Agnostic, he was
one of Germany s most eminent men of
science and one of the first physicists
(in later life) and physiologists of his time.
D. Sep. 8, 1894.
HELYETIUS, Claude Adrien, French Encyclopedist. B. (Paris) Jan. 18, 1715. He was employed in the financial world, and became in 1738 a Farmer- General of the Finances. Having a large fortune, he resigned his position in order to cultivate letters and philosophy ; and his house was one of the chief centres of the Encyclopaedists. Stimulated by Locke s essay, he in 1758 published a work, DC I esprit, which was burned by order of the Parlement. Mme. du Deffand remarked that he had "let out everybody s secret." His better known work, De I honime, was published posthumously, and is frankly Materialistic. His collected works were published in fourteen volumes in 1796. D. Dec. 2G, 1771.
HENDERSON, Professor Laurence Joseph, A.B., M.D., American biochemist. B. June 3, 1878. Ed. Harvard and Strass- burg Universities. Henderson was lecturer on biochemistry at Harvard in 1904-1905, instructor from 1905 to 1910, and has been associate professor since 1910. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Physiological Society, the Ameri can Society of Biological Chemists, and the American Chemical Society. Besides his numerous scientific papers, he has written The Fitness of the Environment (1913) and The Order of Nature (1917). In these works he rejects emphatically the idea of design in nature and all natural theology based on it, though he contends for a certain kind of teleology. He thinks Darwin s advance from theology to Theism, and from Theism to Agnosticism, the normal growth, and adds : " We shall never find the explanation of the riddle, 337
for it concerns the origin of things " (The
Order of Nature, p. 209).
HENIN DE CUYILLERS, Baron Etienne Felix d , French writer. B. Apr. 27, 1755. He served in the army, then in the diplomatic service, being charge d affaires at Constantinople 1793-95. Napoleon made him a general and a baron (1809), but he was deposed at the Restora tion, and devoted himself chiefly to writing on animal magnetism (to which he ascribed the miracles of Jesus). He wrote also Des Comediens et du clerge (1825), a drastic anti-clerical work. D. Aug. 2, 1841.
HENLEY, William Ernest, LL.D., poet and critic. B. Aug. 23, 1849. Ed. Crypt Grammar School, Gloucester. He settled in London in 1877, and, in succes sion, edited London (1877-78), the Maga zine of Art (1886-89), the National Observer (1891-94), and the Neiv Review (1894-98). His first poems were published in 1888, and a definitive edition appeared in 1898, followed later by For England s Sake (1900) and Hawthorn and Lavender (1901). Henley was not a systematic thinker he thought philosophy " like chalk in one s mouth " and his mood in regard to religion changed much. In his later poetry he is a decided Theist, but he is consistently sceptical about a future life. In 1875 he wrote (Poems, 1898,
p. 119) :-
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade.
He changed only in the direction of a firmer Theism. D. June 11, 1903.
HENNE AM RHYN, Otto, Ph.D., Swiss historian. B. Aug. 26, 1828. Ed. St. Gallen Gymnasium and Berne University. In 1852 he became a secretary of depart ment, in 1857 a gymnasium professor, in 1859 the State Archivist at St. Gallen, in 1872 an editor at Leipzig, and in 1885 338
