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 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.

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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 &quot; Weekly Science Jottings &quot; 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 &quot; the petty concep tions which theologies in their anthropo morphism have devised,&quot; and accepts only &quot; an Eternal and Unknowable.&quot; Religion is, to him, &quot; to live happily, to deal mercifully, to act justly in all things.&quot; 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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