tubes, cylinders and iron work required for the Paris water-works, the most formidable undertaking of the day. He also erected the first steam engine in France, in connexion with these works.
Wilkinson is said to have anticipated by many years the introduction of the hot blast for furnaces, but the leathern pipes, then used, scorched, and it was not a success. His were the first coal-cutting machines. He proposed and cast the first iron bridge. It connected Broseley and Madeley, across the Severn, and its span of 100 ft. 6 in. was considered a triumphal wonder. Wilkinson was now a man of great means and greater influence. He issued tokens of copper, bearing his likeness and on the reverse a forge and tools of the trade, silver coins for 3s. 6d., and also pound notes, as other tradesmen of that day did. He never wrote a letter without using the word iron, indeed he was iron-mad, and provided by will that he should be buried in an iron coffin, preferably in his garden at Castle Head, near Lindal. He died on the 14th of July 1808.
Wilkinson was twice married without issue. His very large property was frittered away during a lawsuit brought by a nephew against the illegitimate children whom he had named as his heirs. It was carried from various courts in the kingdom to the House of Lords and then to the Court of Chancery. Here Lord Eldon decided for the defendants, thus reversing all previous decisions taken upon the law of the case.
WILKINSON, SIR JOHN GARDNER (1797–1875), English traveller and Egyptologist, was born on the 5th of October 1797, the son of the Rev. John Wilkinson, a well-known student of antiquarian subjects. Having inherited a sufficient income from his parents, who died when he was young, he was sent by his guardian to Harrow in 1813, and to Exeter College, Oxford, in 1816. He took no degree, and, suffering from ill-health, went to Italy, where he met Sir William Gell, and resolved to study Egyptology. Between 1821 and 1833 he travelled widely in the Nile Valley and began to publish the results. He returned to England in 1833 for the sake of his health, was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1834, published The Topography of Thebes and General Survey of Egypt (1835) and Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (3 vols., 1837), and on the 26th of August 1839 was knighted by the Melbourne ministry. In 1842 he returned to Egypt and contributed to the Journal of the Geographical Society an article entitled “Survey of the Valley of the Natron Lakes.” This appeared in 1843, in which year he also published an enlarged edition of his Topography, entitled Moslem Egypt and Thebes, a work afterwards reissued in Murray's series. During 1844 he travelled in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, an account of his observations being published in 1848 (Dalmatia and Montenegro, 2 vols.). A third visit to Egypt in 1848–1849 resulted in a further article in the Journal, “On the Country between Wady Halfah and Jebel Berkel” (1851); in 1855 he again visited Thebes. Subsequently he investigated Cornish antiquities, and studied zoology. He died at Llandovery on the 29th of October 1875. To his old school, Harrow, he had already in 1864 presented his collections with an elaborate catalogue.
Besides the works mentioned he published Materia Hieroglyphica (Malta, 1828); Extracts from several Hieroglyphical Subjects (1830); Topographical Survey of Thebes (1830); facsimile of the Turin papyrus (1851), previously edited without the writing on the back of the papyrus by Lepsius; Architecture of Ancient Egypt (1850); A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians (1854); important notes in Rawlinson’s Herodotus; Colour and Taste (1858); articles in archaeological and scientific periodicals.
WILKINSON, TATE (1739–1803), English actor and manager, was born on the 27th of October 1739, the son of a clergyman. His first attempts at acting were badly received, and it was to his wonderful gift of mimicry that he owed his success. His imitations, however, naturally gave offence to the important actors and managers whose peculiarities he hit off to the life. Garrick, Peg Woffington, Samuel Foote and Sheridan, after being delighted with the imitations of the others, were among the most angry, when it came to their turn, and threatened never to forgive him. Garrick never did. As an actor, Wilkinson was most successful in Foote’s plays, but his list of parts was a long one. In Shakespearian characters he was very popular in the provinces. In 1766 he became a partner of Joseph Baker in the management of several Yorkshire theatres, and sole manager after his partner’s death in 1770 of these and others. In this capacity he was both liberal and successful. He died on the 16th of November 1803.
See his Memoirs (4 vols., 1790) and The Wandering Patentee (4 vols., 1795).
WILL, in philosophy. The “Problem of Freedom” provides in reality a common title under which are grouped difficulties and questions of varying and divergent interest and character. These difficulties arise quite naturally from the obligation, which metaphysicians, theologians, moral philosophers, men of science, and psychologists alike recognize, to give an account, consistent with their theories, of the relation of man’s power of deliberate and purposive activity to the rest of the universe. In the main, no doubt, the problem is a metaphysical problem, and has its origin in the effort to reconcile that belief in man’s freedom which is regarded by the unsophisticated moral consciousness as indisputable, with a belief in a universe governed by rational and necessary laws. But the historical origin of the questions at issue is to be sought rather in theology than in metaphysics, while the discovery made from time to time by men of science of the inapplicability of natural laws or modes of operation (which they have been accustomed to regard as of universal range and necessity) to the facts or assumed facts of human activity, is a constant source of fresh discussions of the problem. Similarly the modern attempt upon the part of psychology to analyse (under whatever limitations and with whatever object of inquiry) all the forms and processes of human consciousness has inevitably led to an examination of the consciousness of human freedom: while the postulate of most modern psychologists that conscious processes are not to be considered as removed from the sphere of those necessary causal sequences with which science deals, produces, if the consciousness of freedom be admitted as a fact of mental history, the old metaphysical difficulty in a new and highly specialized form.
There is some ground nevertheless for maintaining, contrary to much modern opinion, that the controversy is fundamentally and in the main a moral controversy. It is true that the precise relation between the activities of human wills and other forms of activity in the natural world is a highly speculative problem and one with which the ordinary man is not immediately concerned. It is true also that the ordinary moral consciousness accepts without hesitation the postulate of freedom, and is unaware of, or imperfectly acquainted with, the speculative difficulties that surround its possibility. Moreover, much work of the highest importance in ethics in modern as well as ancient times has been completed with but scanty, if any, reference to the subject of the freedom of the will, or upon a metaphysical basis compatible with most of the doctrines of both the rival theories. The determinist equally with the libertarian moral philosopher can give an account of morality possessing internal coherence and a certain degree of verisimilitude. Yet it may be doubted (1) whether the problem would ever have arisen at all except for the necessity of reconciling the theological and metaphysical hypotheses of the omniscience and omnipotence of God with the needs of a moral universe: and (2) whether it would retain its perennial interest if the incursions of modern scientific and psychological inquiry into the domain of human consciousness did not appear to come into conflict from time to time with the presuppositions of morality. The arguments proceeding from either of the disputants by means of which the controversy is debated may be largely or almost wholly speculative and philosophical. But that which produces the rival arguments is primarily a moral need. And there are not wanting signs of a revival in recent years of the earlier tendency of philosophical speculation to subordinate the necessities of metaphysical, scientific and even psychological inquiries to the prima facie demands of the moral consciousness.
There is no trace of the emergence of the problem of freedom
