A Liberal Philosopher
L. T. Hobhouse : His Life and Work. By J. A. Hobson and Morris Ginsberg. (Allen and Unwin. 12s. Ild.) ALL who knew the late Professor L. T. Hobhouse, who died in 1928, regarded him with affection as well as respect. It is good to have his life recorded by his old friend, Mr. J. A. Hobson, who knows that the learned philosopher and keen Liberal publicist had a very warm heart beating under a somewhat stern exterior and who pictures the kindly man, beloved by frienas and adored by his students at the London School of Economics.
Hobhouse had made his mark at Oxford as a Greats tutor at Corpus when in 1897, at the age of thirty-three, he was induced to join the Manchester Guardian. For the next ten years he was in the thick of the political fray and gave philosophy a second place to the South African War, Liberal Imperialism, Free Trade and other questions that were then in strenuous debate. In 1907 he accepted the new chair of Sociology at the London School of Economics and thenceforth made it his main task. But it was characteristic of him to devote a good part of his time to the Trade Boards set up for various ill-organized industries, and he never ceased to take a close interest in politics as an advanced Liberal with great sympathy for Labour.
He was a most inspiring teacher and a brilliant and forceful writer. His old colleagues would all confirm the biographers' testimony to Hobhouse's productive power as a leader-writer, and the ease and fluency which he acquired by his journalistic experience on the Manchester Guardian, the Tribune and other papers are pleasantly recognizable in his philosophic treatises, especially in Morals in Evolution and the three compact volumes on sociology, The Rational Good, The Elements of Social Justice and Social Development. These and other works—truly a formidable and varied list--are most competently described and analysed by Hobhouse's pupil and successor, Professor Ginsberg, who shows how wide a field they cover and how profound was the learning that underlies them. Mr. Hobson has printed a few of Hobhouse's articles, including a lengthy survey of the industrial problem, in an appendix to the volume.
E; G. HAWKE. -
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