über die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits (1851, 2nd ed. by Lasswitz, 1901); Über die physikalische und philosophische Atomenlehre (1853, 2nd ed., 1864); Elemente der Psychophysik (1860, 2nd ed., 1889); Vorschule der Ästhetik (1876, 2nd ed., 1898); Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht (1879). He also published chemical and physical papers, and translated chemical works by J. B. Biot and L. J. Thénard from the French. A different but essential side of his character is seen in his poems and humorous pieces, such as the Vergleichende Anatomie der Engel (1825), written under the pseudonym of “Dr Mises.” Fechner’s epoch-making work was his Elemente der Psychophysik (1860). He starts from the Spinozistic thought that bodily facts and conscious facts, though not reducible one to the other, are different sides of one reality. His originality lies in trying to discover an exact mathematical relation between them. The most famous outcome of his inquiries is the law known as Weber’s or Fechner’s law which may be expressed as follows:— “In order that the intensity of a sensation may increase in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression.” Though holding good within certain limits only, the law has been found immensely useful. Unfortunately, from the tenable theory that the intensity of a sensation increases by definite additions of stimulus, Fechner was led on to postulate a unit of sensation, so that any sensation S might be regarded as composed of n units. Sensations, he argued, thus being representable by numbers, psychology may become an “exact” science, susceptible of mathematical treatment. His general formula for getting at the number of units in any sensation is s = c log r, where s stands for the sensation, r for the stimulus numerically estimated, and c for a constant that must be separately determined by experiment in each particular order of sensibility. This reasoning of Fechner’s has given rise to a great mass of controversy, but the fundamental mistake in it is simple. Though stimuli are composite, sensations are not. “Every sensation,” says Professor James, “presents itself as an indivisible unit; and it is quite impossible to read any clear meaning into the notion that they are masses of units combined.” Still, the idea of the exact measurement of sensation has been a fruitful one, and mainly through his influence on Wundt, Fechner was the father of that “new” psychology of laboratories which investigates human faculties with the aid of exact scientific apparatus. Though he has had a vast influence in this special department, the disciples of his general philosophy are few. His world-conception is highly animistic. He feels the thrill of life everywhere, in plants, earth, stars, the total universe. Man stands midway between the souls of plants and the souls of stars, who are angels. God, the soul of the universe, must be conceived as having an existence analogous to men. Natural laws are just the modes of the unfolding of God’s perfection. In his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope, contrasts this joyous “daylight view” of the world with the dead, dreary “night view” of materialism. Fechner’s work in aesthetics is also important. He conducted experiments to show that certain abstract forms and proportions are naturally pleasing to our senses, and gave some new illustrations of the working of aesthetic association. Fechner’s position in reference to predecessors and contemporaries is not very sharply defined. He was remotely a disciple of Schelling, learnt much from Herbart and Weisse, and decidedly rejected Hegel and the monadism of Lotze.
See W. Wundt, G. Th. Fechner (Leipzig, 1901); A. Elsas, “Zum Andenken G. Th. Fechners,” in Grenzbote, 1888; J. E. Kuntze, G. Th. Fechner (Leipzig, 1892); Karl Lasswitz, G. Th. Fechner (Stuttgart, 1896 and 1902); E. B. Titchener, Experimental Psychology (New York, 1905); G. F. Stout, Manual of Psychology (1898), bk. ii. ch. vii.; R. Falckenberg, Hist. of Mod. Phil. (Eng. trans., 1895), pp. 601 foll.; H. Höffding, Hist. of Mod. Phil. (Eng. trans., 1900), vol. ii. pp. 524 foll.; Liebe, Fechners Metaphysik, im Umriss dargestellt (1903). (H. St.)
FECHTER, CHARLES ALBERT (1824–1879), Anglo-French
actor, was born, probably in London, on the 23rd of October
1824, of French parents, although his mother was of Piedmontese
and his father of German extraction. The boy would probably
have devoted himself to a sculptor’s life but for the accident
of a striking success made in some private theatricals. The
result was an engagement in 1841 to play in a travelling company
that was going to Italy. The tour was a failure, and the company
broke up; whereupon Fechter returned home and worked
assiduously at sculpture. At the same time he attended classes
at the Conservatoire with the view of gaining admission to the
Comédie Française. Late in 1844 he won the grand medal of
the Académie des Beaux-Arts with a piece of sculpture, and was
admitted to make his début at the Comédie Française as Seide
in Voltaire’s Mahomet and Valère in Molière’s Tartuffe. He
acquitted himself with credit; but, tired of the small parts he
found himself condemned to play, returned again to his sculptor’s
studio in 1846. In that year he accepted an engagement to
play with a French company in Berlin, where he made his first
decisive success as an actor. On his return to Paris in the
following year he married the actress Eléonore Rabut (d. 1895).
Previously he had appeared for some months in London, in a
season of French classical plays given at the St James’s theatre.
In Paris for the next ten years he fulfilled a series of successful
engagements at various theatres, his chief triumph being his
creation at the Vaudeville on the 2nd of February 1852 of the
part of Armand Duval in La Dame aux camélias. For nearly
two years (1857–1858) Fechter was manager of the Odéon,
where he produced Tartuffe and other classical plays. Having
received tempting offers to act in English at the Princess’s
theatre, London, he made a diligent study of the language, and
appeared there on the 27th of October 1860 in an English
version of Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas. This was followed by The
Corsican Brothers and Don César de Bazan; and on the 20th of
March 1861 he first attempted Hamlet. The result was an
extraordinary triumph, the play running for 115 nights. This
was followed by Othello, in which he played alternately the Moor
and Iago. In 1863 he became lessee of the Lyceum theatre,
which he opened with The Duke’s Motto; this was followed
by The King’s Butterfly, The Mountebank (in which his son Paul,
a boy of seven, appeared), The Roadside Inn, The Master of
Ravenswood, The Corsican Brothers (in the original French version,
in which he had created the parts of Louis and Fabian dei
Franchi) and The Lady of Lyons. After this he appeared at
the Adelphi (1868) as Obenreizer in No Thoroughfare, by Charles
Dickens and Wilkie Collins, as Edmond Dantes in Monte Cristo,
and as Count de Leyrac in Black and White, a play in which the
actor himself collaborated with Wilkie Collins. In 1870 he
visited the United States, where (with the exception of a visit
to London in 1872) he remained till his death. His first appearance
in New York was at Niblo’s Garden in the title rôle of
Ruy Blas. He played in the United States between 1870 and
1876 in most of the parts in which he had won his chief triumphs
in England, making at various times attempts at management,
rarely successful, owing to his ungovernable temper. The last
three years of his life were spent in seclusion on a farm which
he had bought at Rockland Centre, near Quakertown, Pennsylvania,
where he died on the 5th of August 1879. A bust of the
actor by himself is in the Garrick Club, London.
FECKENHAM, JOHN (c. 1515–1584), English ecclesiastic,
last abbot of Westminster, was born at Feckenham, Worcestershire,
of ancestors who, by their wills, seem to have been substantial
yeomen. The family name was Howman, but, according to
the English custom, Feckenham, on monastic profession, changed
it for the territorial name by which he is always known. Learning
his letters first from the parish priest, he was sent at an
early age to the claustral school at Evesham and thence, in his
eighteenth year, to Gloucester Hall, Oxford, as a Benedictine
student. After taking his degree in arts, he returned to the
abbey, where he was professed; but he was at the university
again in 1537 and took his B.D. on the 11th of June 1539.
Returning to Evesham he was there when the abbey was surrendered
to the king (27th of January 1540); and then, with a
pension of £10 a year, he once more went back to Oxford, but
soon after became chaplain to Bishop Bell of Worcester and
then served Bonner in that same capacity from 1543 to 1549.
