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SEN 
SENSELESSLY, adv. Ia a senseless manner; stupidly ; 
unreasonably. 
SENSELESSNESS, s. Folly; unreasonableness; absur¬ 
dity ; stupidity. 
SENSIBILITY, s. [sensibilite, Fr.] Sensibleness; per¬ 
ception. Unused. —•Quickness of sensation; quickness of 
perception; delicacy.—Modesty is a kind of quick and deli¬ 
cate feeling in the soul: it is such an exquisite sensibility, 
as warns a woman to shun the first appearance of every 
thing hurtful. Addison. 
SENSIBILITY, in Physiology, the power of receiving an 
impression, and transmitting it to the brain, so as to cause 
sensation or feeling. The question whether any part be sen¬ 
sible is, therefore, whether by acting on it in any way, 
feeling can be excited. Sensibility in this, its common ac¬ 
ceptation, obviously refers to the internal feeling or act of 
consciousness resulting from its exercise. Some physiologists 
have used the word in a more extensive sense, to denote all 
impressions produced on our organs, even those which are 
not felt; as that of the blood on the heart, the food on the 
alimentary canal, &c. Thus Bichat calls the former animal 
sensibility, because it is peculiar to living beings : and distin¬ 
guishes the latter by the name organic , as it belongs to those 
parts where motions are involuntary, and which constitute 
the automatic or organic life. 
SENSIBLE, adj. [sensible, Fr., sensilis, Lat] Having 
the power of perceiving by the senses.—A blind man con¬ 
ceives not colours, but under the notion of some other sen¬ 
sible faculty. Glanville.— Perceptible by the senses. 
Come let me clutch thee: 
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still -- 
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
To feeling as to sight ? Shakspeare. 
Air is sensible to the touch by its motion, and by its 
resistance to bodies moved in it. Ar but knot. —Perceived 
by the mind.—Idleness was punished by so many stripes in 
public, and the disgrace was more sensible than the pain. 
Temple. —Perceiving by either mind or senses; having per¬ 
ception by the mind or senses.—The versification is as beau¬ 
tiful as the description complete: every ear must be sensible 
of it. Broome. —Having moral perception ; having the qua¬ 
lity of being affected by moral good or ill. 
If thou wert sensible of courtesy, 
I should not make so great a shew of zeal. Shakspeare. 
Having quick intellectual feeling; being easily or strongly 
affected. 
Even I, the bold, the sensible of wrong. 
Restrain’d by shame, was forc’d to hold my tongue. 
Dryden. 
Convinced; persuaded. A colloquial use. —They are 
very sensible that they had better have pushed their con¬ 
quests on the other side of the Adriatic; for then their ter¬ 
ritories would have lain together. Addison.— In conversa¬ 
tion it has sometimes the sense of reasonable; judicious; 
wise.—I have been tired with accounts from sensible men, 
furnished with matters of fact which have happened within 
their own knowledge. Addison. 
■ SENSIBLE, s. Sensation : a poetical conversion of the 
adjective into the substantive. 
Our torments also may in length of time 
Become our elements; these piercing fires 
As soft as now severe, our temper chang’d 
Into their temper; which must needs remove 
The sensible of pain. Milton. 
Whatever is perceptible around us. 
The creation 
Of this wide sensible. More. 
SENSIBLENESS, s. Possibility to be perceived by the 
senses.'—Actual perception by mind or body.—-Sensibility. 
The sensibleness of the eye renders it subject to pain, as 
also unfit to be dressed with sharp medicaments. Sharp. 
SENSIBLY, adv. Perceptibly to the senses. 
SEN 
He is your brother, lords; sensibly fed 
Of that self-blood, that first gave life to you. Shakspeare . 
A sudden pain in my right foot increased sensibly. Temple. 
—The salts of human urine may, by the violent motion of 
the blood, be turned alkaline, and even corrosive; and so 
they affect the fibres of the brain more sensibly than other 
parts. Arbu.thnot.~~ With perception of either mind or 
body.—Externally; by impression on the senses.—That 
church of Christ, which we properly term his body mysti¬ 
cal, can be but one; neither can that one be sensibly dis¬ 
cerned by any, inasmuch as the parts thereof are some in 
heaven already with Christ. Hooker.— With quick intel¬ 
lectual perception. 
What remains past cure 
Bear not too sensibly ; nor still insist 
To afflict thyself in vain. Milton . 
[In conversation.] Judiciously; reasonably. 
SENSITIVE, adj. [sensitif, Fr.] Having sense, but 
not reason or perception. 
SENSITIVE Plant, s. [ mimosa , Lat.] A plant. 
Whence does it happen, that the plant which well 
We name the sensitive, should move and feel ? 
Whence know her leaves to answer her command. 
And with quick horror fly the neighbouring hand ? Prior. 
The sensitive plant is so called, because, as soon as you 
touch it, the leaf shrinks. Mortimer. See Mimosa. 
SENSITIVELY, adv. In a sensitive manner.—-The sen¬ 
sitive faculty, through the nature of man’s sense, may ex¬ 
press itself more sensitively towards an inferior object than 
towards God: this is a piece of frailty. Hammond. 
SENSORIUM, hi Physiology, the part which feels and 
perceives, the common centre, to which sentiments are con¬ 
veyed, and from which volition emanates; in other words, 
the brain. In medical and physiological writings, this ex¬ 
pression is used as synonymous with brain ; thus we read of 
affections of the sensorium ; of sensorial power and influ¬ 
ence, &c. Sensorium commune, is the imaginary point of 
the brain, the residence of the metaphysical soul, to which 
every sensation is brought, and from which all determina¬ 
tions of the will proceed. The like nonsense is inseparable 
from all those who attempt to class the soul under our or¬ 
dinary conceptions of quantity. 
SENSUAL, adj. [ sensuel , Fr.] Consisting in sense; 
depending on sense; affecting the senses.—-Men in general 
are too partial, in favour of a sensual appetite, to take notice 
of truth when they have found it. L' Estrange. —Pleasing 
to the senses; carnal; not spiritual.—The greatest part of 
men are such as prefer their own private good before all 
things, even that good which is sensual before whatsoever 
is most divine. Hooker —Devoted to sense; lewd; luxu¬ 
rious. 
From amidst them rose 
Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell. 
The sensuallest; and, after Asmodai, 
The fleshliest incubus. Milton. 
SENSUALIST, s. A carnal person; one devoted to 
corporeal pleasures.—Let atheists and sensualists satisfy 
themselves as they are able; the former of which will find, 
that, as long as reason keeps her ground, religion neither can 
nor will lose her’s. South. 
SENSU'ALITY, t. [sensuality, Fr. Cotgrave.] Devo¬ 
tedness to the senses; addiction to brutal and corporeal 
pleasures..—Impure and brutal sensuality was too much 
confirmed by the religion of those countries, where even 
Venus and Bacchus had their temples. Bentley. 
To SENSUALIZE, v, a. To sink to sensual pleasures; 
to degrade the mind into subjection to the senses.—Not to 
suffer one’s self to be sensualized by pleasures, like those 
who were changed into brutes by Circe. Pope. 
SENSUALLY, adv. In a sensual manner.—-She had 
lived most corruptly and sensually.- Ld. Herbert. 
SENSUOUS, adj. Sensual.-—The soul by this means of 
overbodying herself, given up to fleshly delights, bated her 
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