How can we distinguish “H-muet” or “H-aspiré”?

Question

Put the definite article before these words:

Habitude, Hache, Hanche, Hantise, Hardiesse, Harpe, Hasard, Hâte, Haut, Hauteur, Hélicoptère, Héros, Héroïne, Héroïsme, Hiérarchie, Historien, Horlogerie, Huile, Humanité, Humidité.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there is no rule. Whether the h is considered a consonant (H aspiré, even though the letter itself is not sounded) or is transparent (H muet) is a case-by-case matter, partly driven by etymology. It's more common for words of Latin origin to have a H muet, and for words of Germanic or more recent origin to have a H aspiré, but this is by far not a hard-and-fast rule one way or another.

Wikipedia has a list of words with H aspiré, and that's as good as it gets.