WILLIS
WILSON
Williams was apprenticed at the age of
fourteen to a mathematical and optical
instrument maker. He improved his
scanty education by attending the Mecha
nics Institution (London), and in 1841,
having inherited a little money, he went to
Edinburgh University for two years. Two
further years he spent in a walking tour
over Europe, earning his living as an
artisan. On his return he set up as an
instrument maker in London ; but his chief
concern was to give public lectures on
science. He was on the Committee of
Management of the Mechanics Institution,
and he and others forced the managers to
accept from W. Ellis [SEE] the funds in
virtue of which it was converted into the
Birkbeck School. Ellis endowed a similar
school at Edinburgh, and Williams was
headmaster. The clergy were very hostile
(see letter of George Combe to Williams in
the Memoir prefixed to his Vindication of
Phrenology, 1894). Williams criticized the
clergy in his Who Should Teach Chris
tianity to Children? (1853). I n 1 8 54 he
joined the staff of the Birmingham and
Midlands Institute. In later years he
was a very successful chemist ; but he was
zealous to the last for popular education
D. Nov. 28, 1892.
WILLIS, Robert, M.D., M.E.C.S., physician and writer. B. 1799. Ed Edinburgh University. After graduating at Edinburgh, Willis migrated to London and practised there. He was admitted to the Eoyal College of Surgeons. Besides a number of medical works, he wrote a life of Spinoza (B. de Spinoza : His Life, Correspondence, and Ethics, 1870) and Servetus and Calvin (1877). To the Scott series of nationalist pamphlets he con tributed The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua in the Face of the Science and Moral Senses of Our Age (1875) and A Dialogue by Way of Catechism (1872). Willis also translated Spinoza s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. He followed Spinoza s Pantheism as he indicates in his Life of the master D Sep. 21, 1878.
897
WILSON, Andrew, Ph.D., M.B.,
F.R.S.E., F.L.S., physician, lecturer, and
writer. B. Sep. 30, 1852. Ed. Dollar
Institute, Edinburgh Royal High School,
and Edinburgh University and Medical
School. In 1876 he was appointed lecturer
on zoology and comparative anatomy at
the Edinburgh Medical School. Later he
edited Health, and was an examiner to the
Faculty of Medicine of Glasgow University.
Dr. Wilson was, however, best known and
most serviceable to his fellows as a popular
educator in science. He was Lecturer on
Physiology and Health to the George
Combe Trust and Gilchrist Trust Lecturer.
He wrote a large number of popular works
on science (chiefly Chapters on Evolution,
1883, and Studies in Life and Sense, 1887),
and was a constant and esteemed con
tributor to the magazines. For many
years he wrote the " Weekly Science
Jottings " in the Illustrated London Netvs.
Dr. Wilson lectured occasionally at South
Place Chapel in the eighties, and in one of
his published lectures (What is Eeligion?,
1884) he gives a plain declaration of his
Eationalist position. He was a Spencerian
Agnostic. He rejects " the petty concep
tions which theologies in their anthropo
morphism have devised," and accepts only
" an Eternal and Unknowable." Religion
is, to him, " to live happily, to deal
mercifully, to act justly in all things."
D. Aug. 25, 1912.
WILSON, David Alec, lawyer and writer. B. 1864. Ed. Hutcheson s Gram mar School and Glasgow University. He was called to the Bar in 1890. Five years earlier he had entered the Indian Civil Service in Burma, and he served there until 1912, rising to the position of Judge. Mr. Wilson made a sympathetic study of Eastern life and religion (see his East and West, 1911) ; but the chief interest of his life is the study of Carlyle, on whose life and works he is one of the highest authorities. He has published Mr. Froude and Carlyle (1898) and The Truth About Carlyle (1913) ; and in his retirement at
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