Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/497

Rh W E B W E B 471 only through its sensational resultant. Hence, he argues, we can only compare one psychical state with another, and our standard of measurement is therefore necessarily a relative one ; it depends directly upon the preceding state with which we compare the present. Others have attempted to give the law a purely physical or &quot; physio logical&quot; explanation. Instead of holding with Fechner that the law expresses a recondite relation between the material and the spiritual world, they prefer to regard the quanti tative relation between the last physical antecedent in the brain and the resultant mental change as prima facie one of simple proportion, and to treat Weber s law as holding between the initial physical stimulus and the final action of the nerve-centres. According to this interpretation, the law would be altogether due to the nature of nervous action. As a nerve, says Sully, after a temporary degree of stimulation temporarily loses its sensibility, so the greater the previous stimulation of a nerve the greater is the additional stimulus required to produce an appreciable amount of sensation. AVeber s law, it must be added, holds only within certain limits. In the &quot; chemical &quot; senses of taste and smell experiments are almost impossible. It is not practicable to limit the amount of the stimulus with the necessary exactitude, and the results are further vitiated by the long continuance of the physiological effects. The same con siderations apply with still more force to the organic sensations, and the results in the case of temperature sensations are completely uncertain. The law is approxi mately true in the case of sight, hearing, pressure, and the muscular sense, most exactly in the case of sound. As this is the sense which affords the greatest facilities for measuring the precise amount of the stimulus, it may per haps be inferred that, if we could attain the same exacti tude in the other senses, with the elimination of the numerous disturbing extraneous influences at work, the law would vindicate itself with the same exactitude and certainty. It is further to be noted, however, that even in those senses in which it has been approximately verified, the law holds with stringency only within certain limits. The results are most exact in the middle regions of the sensory scale ; on the contrary, when we approach the upper or lower limit of sensibility, they become quite un certain. Literature. &quot;Weber s investigations were given to the public in his articles in Wagner s Handwdrterbucli der Physiologic. Feohner s Elements der Psycho-physik, referred to above, was published in 1860, and contains an elaborate exposition of the whole subject. He replied to his critics in two later works, In Sachen der Psycho- j/hysik (1877) and Revision der Hauptpunkte der Psycho-2)hysik (1882). Delboeufs Etude psychophysique (1873), and G. E. Miiller s Zur Grundlcgung der Psycho-physik, are also important documents ; and the subject is fully treated in Wundt s Physiologische Psycho logic and in Ladd s Physiological Psychology, which is based upon Wundt. Two English monographs may be referred to as containing important criticisms of the law, the paper of Messrs Dewar and M Kendrick in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1873, and Mr James Ward s &quot;Attempt to Interpret Fechner s Law,&quot; in Mind, i. 452 sq. (A. SE.) WEBSTER, DANIEL (1782-1852), American states man, was born at Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18, 1782. His family can be traced back without difficulty to Thomas Webster, of Scottish ancestry, who settled in New Hampshire in 1G36, but no further. Ebenezer Webster, the father of Daniel, rose to the rank of captain in the &quot; French and Indian War.&quot; From him his sons Ezekiel and Daniel inherited great physical force ; their mother, Abigail Eastman, gave them their intellectual powers. Daniel always insisted on considering his elder brother, who became a leading lawyer in his native State, as really his superior in intellect, and the correspondence between them was close and confidential until Ezekiel s death in 1829. Living on the frontier, Daniel was com pelled to depend for early education on his mother and on the scanty schooling customary in winter ; and for much of this he was indebted to the fact that he was physically the weakest of his family. It is a little odd, however, that he failed utterly in that with which his final reputation was so closely connected. In his own words : &quot;There was one thing I could not do: I could not make a declamation; I could not speak before the school.&quot; When he was fifteen years old a family council decided to send him to college, a step involving severe abstinence and additional struggle on the part of his immediate relatives. After an imperfect preparation, he graduated at Dartmouth College in 1801, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Boston in 1805, from the office of Christopher Gore. Regard for his father made Webster begin practice in the town of Boscawen, near his early home ; but his father died within a year, and he removed to Portsmouth, the largest town of the State. Here he took a leading place at the bar, having but one rival. In May 1813 he entered Congress as a representative from New Hampshire, being placed at once on the committee of foreign affairs. As a moderate Federalist, he held that attacks on Canada should cease, and that the war should be confined to the ocean. His first speech showed that the raw New Hamp shire boy of a dozen years before had developed new powers. &quot; If the war must continue, go to the ocean. If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your fortune points you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water s edge.&quot; The position of any Federalist in Congress, however, was not a wide sphere of influence ; and Webster, removing to Boston in 1816, gave up political life for some years. At the Massachusetts bar Webster soon gained a place as prominent as he had held in New Hampshire, and within three years his reputation as a lawyer had become national. His national standing was gained by his argu ment in the &quot; Dartmouth College case,&quot; practically endorsed by the Supreme Court. Dartmouth College had been chartered by the king in 1769. In 1816 the New Hampshire legislature undertook to alter the charter and reorganize the corporation ; and the State courts sustained the legislature in a suit brought by the old trustees against the new. On appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1818, Webster contended that the College was an eleemosynary corporation, over which the legislature had no more power than the king who chartered it ; that the king had no power to void such a charter, and the New Hampshire legislature no such sovereign powers as parliament ; that the legislature s action came within the Federal constitution s prohibition of State legislation altering contracts; that &quot;the charter of 1769 is a con tract;&quot; that &quot;the acts in question impair this contract;&quot; and that they were therefore unconstitutional and void. The Supreme Court upheld Webster s view, and it was soon seen that he had worked a serious change in the relations of the States to corporations, as they. had thus far been understood. The States endeavoured to meet the new rule by inserting in their charters clauses retaining the right to alter them ; but the spirit of the &quot; Dartmouth College case,&quot; which has always had its opponents among American lawyers, has had its influence upon judges every where, in every variety of cognate cases. From this time Webster was recognized as the leading lawyer of the country, and his services were in constant demand. His cases are quite beyond statement within the space here available. Some of his leading constitutional cases