HEDIN 



2758 



HEGIRA 



in America. It is about nine inches long; the 

 stiff hair on its back is extended into short 

 spines, and on the underside of its body there 

 is short fur. It has a long nose, which it uses 

 in rooting for insects, such as ants. When 

 alarmed, it curls itself up, with its head under- 

 neath, and looks like a ball covered with brown 

 spikes. The longer the enemy's attack contin- 



THE HEDGEHOG 



ues the tighter the ball becomes. The hedge- 

 hog feeds at night on insects, bird's eggs and 

 small snakes, and in winter hibernates com- 

 pletely (see HIBERNATION). The mother hedge- 

 hog bears from four to eight young at a time. 

 The porcupine is often confused with the hedge- 

 hog. The former, however, feeds on twigs and 

 undecayed animal matter, and relies entirely on 

 its quills for defense. See PORCUPINE. 



HEDIN, heh deen' , SVEN ANDERS (1865- ), 

 a Swedish explorer, famed for his researches 

 and observations in parts of Asia which had 

 not been previously studied in detail by geog- 

 raphers. His early expeditions took him into 

 East Turkestan, 

 the Pamir, North- 

 ern Tibet, Mon- 

 golia and Siberia, 

 and the results of 

 his studies were 

 published in 1899 

 in a volume en- 

 titled Through , 

 Asia. Of still ' 

 greater import 

 was .a journey to 

 Tibet in 1906- 

 1908, for on this SVEN ANDERS HEDIN 

 expedition he collected data that made pos- 

 sible the first detail map of that portion of the 

 Asiatic continent. Hedin received many hon- 

 ors, including election to the Paris Academy 



of Sciences in 1911 and enrollment in the 

 Swedish nobility in 1912. Late in 1914 he was 

 asked by Emperor William II to visit Belgium 

 for the purpose of studying the effects of the 

 German invasion of that country. 



HEGEL, ha' gel, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH 

 (1770-1831), a German student of mental phe- 

 nomena, the last of four great writers (the 

 others being Kant, Fichte and Schelling) who 

 during their age developed the idealistic phi- 

 losophy of Germany. At one time so great w T as 

 Hegel's influence that he was said to have been 

 the philosophical dictator of Germany. He 

 was a native of Stuttgart, and was educated at 

 the University of Tubingen. For many years 

 he taught at the universities of Jena and Heidel- 

 berg, and later accepted the professorship of 

 philosophy at the University of Berlin. 



Hegel maintained that the world of objects 

 is not only, related to an intelligence, but that 

 it can be nothing but the revelation or mani- 

 festation of intelligence. He connected his 

 idealistic or spiritual view of things with the 

 modern idea of evolution or development (see 

 EVOLUTION). His philosophy divides itself into 

 three departments logic, or the science of 

 thought in its pure unity with itself; the phi- 

 losophy of nature, in which the ideal principle, 

 supposed to exist in all things, is shown to 

 underlie even the external things of the mate- 

 rial world; and the philosophy of spirit, which 

 concerns the life of man as a self-conscious 

 being in his relation to a material world. His 

 most important books are Logic, The History 

 of Philosophy, The Philosophy of Religion and 

 The Philosophy of Art. The ideas of Hegel 

 still retain their power and form one of the 

 most important elements in modern culture. 

 See METAPHYSICS. 



HEGIRA, hej'ira, a word derived from the 

 Arabic, meaning going away, commonly applied 

 to the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to 

 Medina, Friday, July 16, 622. Mohammed had 

 to face danger and much opposition in trying 

 to persuade his countrymen to give up the 

 idolatry that was carried on in Mecca, and he 

 was forced to flee for his life to Medina, in 

 Arabia, which was thereafter known as "the 

 prophet's city." The followers of Mohammed, 

 all over the world, date their years from his 

 flight, as Christians date their calendar from 

 Christ's birth. The word is often spelled 

 HEJIRA. 



The Caliph Omar instituted the new Moslem 

 calendar in 639 or 640, to begin with the first 

 day of the first month in which the flight took 





