[20] The De medio animarum statu of Thomas White, a heterodox Catholic priest, who contested the natural immortality of the soul. White (who died 1676) and Hobbes were friends. [21] _E.W._ vi. 161-418. Though _Behemoth_ was kept back at the king's express desire, it saw the light, without Hobbes's leave, in 1679, before his death. HOBBY, a small horse, probably from early quotations, of Irish breed, trained to an easy gait so that riding was not fatiguing. The common use of the word is for a favourite pursuit or occupation, with the idea either of excessive devotion or of absence of ulterior motive or of profit, &c., outside the occupation itself. This use is probably not derived from the easy ambling gait of the Irish "hobby," but from the "hobby-horse," the mock horse of the old morris-dances, made of a painted wooden horse's head and tail, with a framework casing for an actor's body, his legs being covered by a cloth made to represent the "housings" of the medieval tilting-horse. A hobby or hobby-horse is thus a toy, a diversion. The O. Fr. _hobin_, or _hobi_, Mod. _aubin_, and Ital. _ubina_ are probably adaptations of the English, according to the _New English Dictionary_. The O. Fr. hober, to move, which is often taken to be the origin of all these words, is the source of a use of "hobby" for a small kind of falcon, _falco subbuteo_, used in hawking. HOBHOUSE, ARTHUR HOBHOUSE, 1ST BARON (1819-1904), English judge, fourth son of Henry Hobhouse, permanent under-secretary of state in the Home Office, was born at Hadspen, Somerset, on the 10th of November 1819. Educated at Eton and Balliol, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1845, and rapidly acquired a large practice as a conveyancer and equity draftsman; he became Q.C. in 1862, and practised in the Rolls Court, retiring in 1866. He was an active member of the charity commission and urged the appropriation of pious bequests to educational and other purposes. In 1872 he began a five years' term of service as legal member of the council of the governor-general of India, his services being acknowledged by a K.C.S.I.; and in 1881 he was appointed a member of the judicial committee of the privy council, on which he served for twenty years. He was made a peer in 1885, and consistently supported the Liberal party in the House of Lords. He died on the 6th of December 1904, leaving no heir to the barony. His papers read before the Social Science Association on the subject of property were collected in 1880 under the title of _The Dead Hand_. HOBOKEN, a small town of Belgium on the right bank of the Scheldt about 4 m. above Antwerp. It is only important on account of the shipbuilding yard which the Cockerill firm of Seraing has established at Hoboken. Many wealthy Antwerp merchants have villas here, and it is the headquarters of several of the leading rowing clubs on the Scheldt. Pop. (1904) 12,816.